Rescue excavations of this kind, carried out under pressure of development, frequently turn up the most matter-of-fact evidence of ancient daily life, and this site was no exception. What the team uncovered was a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site found widely across Ireland, typically consisting of a trough, a hearth, and a mound of fire-cracked stone built up through repeated use.

Two hearths and a trough were identified and excavated under licence in 2006. Radiocarbon dating of material from the site placed its use somewhere between 1210 and 970 BC, a range that falls comfortably within the Irish Bronze Age. The method works like this: stones are heated in the hearth and dropped into a water-filled trough, raising the temperature quickly enough to cook meat or, as some researchers now argue, to serve other purposes such as brewing or textile processing. The cracked and spent stones are discarded to the side, building up over time into the characteristic burnt mound that often survives long after every other trace of the site has vanished. At Coolbeg, the evidence was modest but clear: a small, functional installation used by people working or living in this part of Wicklow more than three thousand years ago.