Radiocarbon dating indicates that the majority of fulachta fiadh were constructed during the mid to late Bronze Age (c.1500- c. 500 BC), though some Neolithic examples are known.
In legend, fulachta fiadh were the cooking place of the Fianna. As they were lead around the country by Fionn MacCumhal, the band of young warriors would feast on wild boar and deer. It had been suggested that the term ‘fulacht fiadh’ meant ‘cooking place of the Fianna’ and indeed on earlier maps the sites are sometimes called ‘fulachta Fian’.
Now considering that fulacht fiadh consists of a through (a pit) and a mound of burned and cracked stones, archaeologists suggested that the cooking was done in the through, with the water being heated by hot stones which were heated in the hearth and then dropped into the through....
The Ballyvourney reconstruction of fulacht fiadh included successful attempts at heating the water and cooking meat in this manner. In the experiment it took about half an hour to bring 450 L of water to the boil and four hours to cook a 4.5 kg leg of mutton.
Impressive some would say. And the proof that fulacht fiadh were indeed used as cooking pits.
But one of the people who took part in these cooking experiments had this to say about it:
"..having used a fulacht fiadh for a day down in Wexford in the way it's described in the books in Ireland, I have no doubt that the books are wrong. It took a good few hours of constant work by a team of us to maintain the fire, keep the stones going into the water and maintain that boiling water for long enough to cook a joint of meat...So I don't think that fulachts were used for cooking. There are a lot of much easier ways to cook a joint of meat...".
In this article I would like to explain why I agree that fulachta fiadh were not used for cooking large amounts of meat in the through heated with hot stones. And I would like to suggest what was probably used instead for cooking large amount of meat during Bronze age in Ireland.
You can read more about this here:
http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/07/fulacht-fiadh-cooking-pit.html
I finished my post on the subject "Fulacht fiadh - a cooking pit?" with this paragraph:
"So I think that we can safely say that fulachta fiadh were not used in the way the mainstream archaeology suggest they were used: for cooking large amounts of meat in throughs full of water heated by hot stones. The Bronze Age people who built fulachta fiadh had much more efficient ways of cooking large quantities of meat at their disposal."
But what about the throughs? Every fulachta fiadh had a through, so they must have been used for something. But if not for cooking, what were they used for?
In my next few posts I will like to propose what the throughs could have been used for.
In this post I would like to propose that one of the possible efficient (very important) uses of the Fulacht fiadh's throughs could have been acorn leaching.
You can read more here:
http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/11/fulacht-fiadh-acorn-leaching-pit.html
In August 2007 two Galway based archaeologists, Billy Quinn and Declan Moore, suggested that fulachta fiadh were used primarily for the brewing of beer.
In this post I will explain why I don't believe that fulachta fiadh were used as breweries, even though they could have been.
If you like your beer you should read this. You will appreciate your pint more afterwords... :)
You can read more about it here:
http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/12/fulacht-fiadh-primitive-ale-brewery.html
Bronze Age Irish must have used and valued salt, just like other people of Bronze Age Europe. The most common way of extracting salt in Non Mediterranean parts of Europe during Bronze age was by boiling a concentrated brine solution until all the water evaporated leaving behind salty sludge. This sludge was then dried and stored in a shape of salt cakes. In most parts of Bronze Age Europe, including Britain, brine was boiled in coarse clay vessels known as "briquetage". Once all the water was evaporated, the vessels were broken in order for the salt cakes contained inside to be taken out. The remains of these broken salt extraction vessels are found today in Britain in the so called "red hills".
The red hills are not found in Ireland. But, there is another possible way of extracting salt by boiling a concentrated brine solution which does not use clay vessels: Boiling the brine in pits using fire heated stones. This type of salt extraction was widely used by Native Americans in Eastern USA who used clay lined pits. Could the same type of salt extraction have been used by the Bronze Age Irish, except that instead of clay lined pits, they would have used fulacht fiadh wood lined troughs? Or maybe the Bronze Age Irish extracted salt by just dripping the salty brine on fire heated stones? A "very effective method" which Strabo reports was used by the "European tribes".
Now I am not saying that all the fulachtai fiadh were used for salt extraction. A fulacht fiadh built in a bog, on top of the hill, somewhere in the center of the island of Ireland certainly wasn't. But those built next to the seashore could have been used as very cost effective salt extraction facilities...And when I say cost effective, I mean that the value and price of salt during the Bronze Age certainly made the huge amount of labor involved in boiling water in fulacht fiadh worth-vile...
You can find the full article here:
http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/12/fulacht-fiadh-salt-extraction-facility.html
Ps: this post is not only about the possibility that fulachta fiadh were used for salt extraction during the Bronze Age. It is also about the extraction of salt in Britain and Ireland since the early Bronze Age, and its dependence on the cyclical climate changes in Europe over the last 4000 years.
Were fulachta fiadh used as sweat lodges? And if so how exactly were they used as sweat lodges?
You can read more about this here:
http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/12/fulacht-fiadh-sweat-lodge.html
In my post "Fulacht fiadh - sweat lodge" I proposed that fulachta fiadh could have been seasonal temporary campaign camps built by Fianna hunting bands, and that they consisted of wigwam type shelters which could have been used as both lodgings and steam rooms.
At the end of that article I said that, there is a place in Europe where we still find a particular type of temporary shelters which are built by soldiers, hunters and travelers on campaigns, which are very similar in construction to wigwams or inipis, which are heated by fire heated stones, and which are used as sweat and steam rooms...
That place is Western Russia, Ukraine, Belarus where the same type of temporary travel "sweat lodges" are still made today and are known as "походная баня" (pokhodnaya banya) meaning "hiking bathhouse".
A permanent version of this type of bathhouse is known as "Chernaia banya" (black bathhouse) and I believe that this type of bathhouse is the origin of Sauna...
You can read more about banyas and development of saunas here:
http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2017/01/banya.html
Geoffrey Keating, in his 17th-century History of Ireland, says that during the winter the fianna were quartered and fed by the nobility, during which time they would keep order on their behalf, but during the summer, from Beltaine to Samhain, they were obliged to live by hunting for food and for pelts to sell. If the Fianna really lived from hunting for pelts to sell, they had to be able to preserve a huge surplus of meat they ended up with during the hunting season for the winter or at least for the duration of transport from the hunting camp to the customers in villages. To do that they had to cure the meat through smoking or salting and smoking. In this article I would like to show that Fulachta fiadh could have been used as efficient fish and meat curing facilities.
You can read about it here:
http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2017/02/fulacht-fiadh-meat-and-fish-curing.html
Geoffrey Keating, in his 17th-century History of Ireland, says that during the winter the fianna were quartered and fed by the nobility, during which time they would keep order on their behalf, but during the summer, from Beltaine to Samhain, they were obliged to live by hunting for food and for pelts to sell. If the Fianna really lived from hunting for pelts to sell, they had to be able to turn animal skins into durable, useful and good looking leather and pelts. To do that they had to preserve (tan) the skins.
In this article I would like to show that Fulachta fiadh could have been used as efficient tanneries (providing troughs were made watertight).
You can find the article here:
http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2017/02/fulacht-fiadh-tannery.html
We have evidence that until recently people actually used bogs deliberately to preserve food and skin. Even patents were proposed for commercial, industrial use of this technology.
This sheds a new light on the bog bodies and bog butter...
What I am trying to say is that people could have deliberately placed food and bodies into bogs to preserve them... To make a miracle preservation pit, you don't need a fulacht trough. All you need is a pit, a hole in the bog, which will fill with bog water. And if you want to use fulacht which is not located in the bog proper, but in the waterlogged marshy area near the peat bog, just dig some wet peat, dunk it into the trough which is already filled with acidic water and mix....
Is this why some fulachta fiadh were originally built in waterlogged acidic soils near bogs? I believe so...
You can read more about it here:
http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2017/02/peat.html
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