County: Limerick Site name: CORBALLY
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E1177
Author: Edmond O’Donovan, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Fulacht fia
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 559095m, N 658493m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.676058, -8.604865
The fulacht fiadh is on the boundary of the gently sloping ridge where the dry ground of Corbally meets marshy ground along the banks of the River Shannon. ‘Lucas Pond’, a wide, linear wet ditch, is 5m to the north of the site. The site had been extremely truncated in the later part of the 20th century by a lattice of trenches excavated for sewer pipes through the mound.
Distinct, black, charcoal-rich, sandy clays were identified under the burnt-mound deposits at the western end of the site. Two areas of the burnt mound were uncovered by the excavation, measuring 10.8m east–west by 3.5m. The mound varied between 0.24m and 0.02m deep at its edges. The mound is very likely to have been larger, as considerable truncation of the site is evident on its northern, southern and western edges. The western end of the site was characterised by a deposit of burnt stone and charcoal. This deposit comprised moderately compact, black clay with very frequent (80–90%) inclusions of burnt sandstone of varying size (averaging 0.05–0.06m, with the largest 0.15m). The eastern surviving deposits of the burnt mound comprised black sandy clay with very frequent (80%) inclusions of burnt sandstone (measuring 0.03–0.08m). The south-eastern edge of the mound was composed of burnt stone in brown clay.
The identification of the fulacht fiadh at Corbally is further evidence of widespread settlement and occupation in County Limerick over a long time period in the Bronze Age. The site parallels other sites excavated by the writer during development of the Southern Interceptor of the Limerick Main Drainage Scheme around the rural fringe of the city at Rathbane South and Banemore (Excavations 2000, No. 607, 00E0431, and No. 575, 00E0506). The identification of cereal grains at Corbally from the mound begs the question of their origin. Two cereals grains are hardly evidence of food production at the site, and it is more likely that either the grains were brought accidentally to the site or the site was close to a prehistoric field system where the crop was grown.
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