Burren Archaeology Bronze Age

Evidence available from archaeological and palynological (the study of pollen records) sources suggest that farming activity and society grew strongly in the Burren over the course of the Bronze Age. 

From pollen studies we see that there was a major decline in woodland cover, including the dominant species pine and hazel, and others such as yew, oak, ash, elm, birch and alder. In contrast grassland species such as ribwort plantain were more common, indicating a quite intensive period of farming activity, one that may eventually have contributed (along with a deterioration in climate) to extensive soil loss in the region, laying bare the limestone skeleton that we see in the Burren today.

This relatively prosperous Bronze Age agricultural society left a significant cultural legacy, including hundreds of cist graves and fulachta fiadha, numerous barrows (earthen and stone), ritual monuments, and several artifacts, including a bronze dagger from Gortaclare near Carran and the famous Glenisheen gold collar. 

Though cist graves are less visible on the landscape than the ‘dolmens’ that preceeded them, several hundred of the cairns which house these graves have been identified in the Burren, while it is likely that hundreds more have never been recorded. One of the most famous must be the multiple cist cairn at Poulawack in the south-central Burren. Excavated by a Harvard University team led by Hencken in the 1930s, it was found to contain the remains of sixteen people, found in ten separate graves, some of which are thought to have had a Bronze Age origin.

The term fulachta fiadh means ‘cooking places of the wild’ or ‘cooking places of the deer’. Several hundred of these horseshoe-shaped mounds are found in the Burren uplands, dating from roughly 5,000 years ago. Varying somewhat in size, shape, and distribution (in clusters of one to eight), they are composed of discarded charcoal and heat-fractured limestone that was once used to boil water for cooking or bathing in a lined central trough.

The main requirements for cooking using this method would have been an ample supply of stone, fuel and water, the relatively limited supply of the latter dictating the location of the sites in the Burren to a large extent. Experiments have proven that this system was very efficient, helped to tenderise the meat, and to flavour it using ‘sugans’ or ropes composed of local herbs. Best of all was the fact that once the meat was cooked the pit of warm water made an ideal bathing area  for the users of the site.