There are at least five of them, possibly closer to seventeen if the less distinct humps scattered across the same field are counted, and each one conceals the same characteristic fill: burnt stone and blackened soil. These are fulachtaí fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found widely across Ireland, typically consisting of a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone heaped around a sunken trough. The accepted interpretation is that water in the trough was heated by dropping fire-heated stones into it, though some researchers have proposed alternative uses including brewing or textile preparation. Whatever their original purpose, they tend to cluster near water, and this site is no exception: a small stream, a tributary of the River Lee, runs along the western boundary of the field.

The concentration here is striking. Five sites recorded in a single marshy field, with the strong likelihood that many more lie beneath the same ground in varying states of preservation, suggests this was an area of repeated and perhaps prolonged use in prehistory. One of the better-preserved examples sits close to the stream: a mound roughly thirty centimetres high and nine metres by seven metres across, with a trough that opens to the north, measuring three metres by two. By the time the site was surveyed by Michael Connolly as part of a Lee Valley area study in 1996 and 1997, that trough had taken on a new layer of history. A concrete fence post had been driven into its centre, and the hollow itself had filled with standing water, sitting thirty centimetres below the crest of the mound. The ancient and the agricultural had merged, almost without ceremony.