When work began on upgrading the N11 in County Wicklow, excavations at Cloghoge turned up a burnt mound, one of the most common yet least celebrated monument types in the Irish landscape. These low, kidney-shaped mounds of fire-cracked stone and charcoal-blackened earth are the debris of a prehistoric cooking or industrial process, probably involving the repeated heating of stones and plunging them into water-filled troughs to bring the water to a boil. They are found in their thousands across Ireland, typically dating to the Bronze Age, and yet each excavation adds a small but distinct piece to our understanding of how people organised their daily lives several thousand years ago.

The Cloghoge mound was excavated by archaeologist Ellen O'Carroll as part of the N11 road improvement scheme, a project that, like many large infrastructure works in Ireland, incorporated archaeological investigation ahead of construction. Such road schemes have proven remarkably productive over the decades, exposing sites that would otherwise remain undetected beneath fields and hedgerows. The excavation was assigned the reference E3224 and the findings were published by O'Carroll in 2009.