It is a fulacht fia, a type of site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, most dating to the Bronze Age. The basic idea is straightforward: a trough, usually timber-lined or stone-lined, was filled with water, and stones heated in a nearby fire were dropped in to bring it to a boil. The resulting mound, which gives fulachtaí fia their distinctive shape, is simply the accumulated debris of shattered, heat-cracked stone discarded after each use. What that boiling water was for, cooking meat being the most common theory, is something archaeologists have debated for decades without full agreement.

This particular example, on a south-facing slope at Mausrower in County Kerry, measures roughly ten metres along its longer axis and opens to the south-west, the classic crescent form with a spread of around four and a half metres across the mouth. It is grass-covered now, the burnt material beneath concealed by pasture that has long since reclaimed the site. Its significance lies partly in its recorded history: it is thought to be one of two fulachtaí fia noted in the 1940s as lying within Patrick Kelleher's land, with the record surviving in the Schools Manuscript collection for County Kerry, a body of local knowledge gathered by schoolchildren under the direction of the Irish Folklore Commission. That a child's written account from the 1940s can be matched to a specific mound in a specific field is one of the quieter pleasures of Irish archaeological research.