This particular example came to light not through a planned excavation but through the routine process of topsoil stripping, the kind of groundwork that routinely precedes development and just as routinely turns up the unexpected.

A fulacht fia, for those unfamiliar with the term, is essentially a Bronze Age cooking site: a mound of burnt stone and charcoal built up over time beside a water source, where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a trough of water to bring it to the boil. They are among the most common field monuments in Ireland, yet each discovery adds something to the picture of how and where prehistoric communities worked and gathered. At Ballycrone, monitoring during topsoil stripping in 2005 revealed what is described as a burnt spread, the characteristic discolouration and debris that signals one of these sites. The portion that was excavated measured roughly 6.5 metres east to west and just under 20 centimetres in depth. That figure, modest as it sounds, represents only part of the feature; the remainder was left undisturbed and preserved in situ beneath the ground, an approach that has become standard practice when time or circumstance limits what can be properly investigated.