2001:1348 - CALARY, Wicklow

Monitoring of topsoil removal on a Bord Gáis Éireann pipeline from Hollybrook to Wicklow town by Ian Doyle (see No. 1357, Excavations 2001, 00E0509) uncovered deposits of burnt stone and charcoal close to a stream in Calary Lower townland.

Excavation exposed a 3.8m by 2.16m spread of burnt stone and charcoal over boulder clay. This was never more than 0.1m in depth and contained small angular pieces of limestone, sandstone, granite and quartzite, 20–150mm in size. All were clearly fire-cracked.

An oval pit was identified 1m to the north of the burnt spread. It measured 2.1m by 2.16m and had a maximum depth of 0.43m. Two fills were present within the pit, a lower mid-brown to grey silty clay containing a quantity of charcoal and pieces of sandstone, siltstone and quartzite, and an upper fill also containing some fragments of granite but with less stone and charcoal.
A second pit, 0.8m in diameter and 14mm deep, was identified to the north-west of the spread of burnt material. It contained a fill indistinguishable from that of the main spread.

This site appears to represent a burnt mound, described as a fulacht fiadh (or variants of the same) in Irish law texts, prose and poetry from the 9th century AD onwards. The description of fulachta fiadh in Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Eirinn requires two pits, one for cooking and one for bathing. The presence of limestone in the smaller pit but not the larger pit may indicate distinct functions. Immersion in water would reduce burnt limestone to calcium hydroxide, which would be unsuitable for cooking. Its higher tolerance for heat could, however, boil water more quickly or generate more steam. Thus its presence in the smaller pit may be significant.

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