The name, roughly translated as "cooking place of the deer", refers to a class of prehistoric burnt mound typically found near water. The basic technology was simple: stones were heated in a fire and dropped into a water-filled trough, usually timber-lined, until the water boiled. Bones, debris, and shattered fire-cracked stone accumulated over repeated use, building up the characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound that survives in the landscape today. Thousands of these monuments are recorded across Ireland, yet each one represents repeated, purposeful activity by people who returned to the same spot, sometimes over generations.

Fulachtaí fia are most commonly associated with the Bronze Age, roughly 2000 to 500 BC, though some sites show evidence of use stretching into the early medieval period. The Kilkenny landscape is particularly well furnished with them, a reflection both of the county's agricultural history and of how well certain low-lying, waterlogged ground preserves organic and burnt material. The specific site at Curraghmartin has not yet been the subject of published excavation detail in the public record, so the finer points of its date, dimensions, and condition remain to be established more precisely. What is known is that it has been identified and recorded as a monument, which means it carries legal protection under Irish heritage legislation.