There was no surface trace of it beforehand, nothing to suggest that what appeared to be ordinary low-lying ground had once been a place of sustained, repeated activity. What emerged was a fulacht fia, a type of site found in large numbers across Ireland, typically interpreted as a Bronze Age outdoor cooking place where water was heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into a trough. The accumulated debris of burnt stone, charcoal and ash from those repeated firings forms the characteristic mound that survives.

Excavation under licence 04E0952, reported by Zajac in 2010, revealed a D-shaped mound measuring 12.5 metres east to west and 5 metres north to south, though only about 0.2 metres deep, much of it truncated by later field drains cutting through its northern and southern edges. Near the centre of the mound lay an oval, unlined trough, at least 1.3 metres long and 0.87 metres wide, filled with organic material, burnt debris, and redeposited subsoil, with boulders and cobbles gathered towards its base. A low internal ridge running through the centre of the trough suggests it was re-cut or widened at some point along its southern edge, a sign of reuse over time. Two small finds came from the fill: a hazelnut shell and a chert flake. About 4 metres to the south, a shallow oval pit, 3.2 metres long and 0.3 metres deep, was filled with burnt stone, ash and charcoal and may have served for storage. A pointed yew stake, shaped to a faceted tip, was recovered nearby, though its connection to the fulacht fia itself remains unclear. The trough's eastern edge and a pit at the northern edge of the mound both extended beyond the boundary of the road-take and were left unexcavated. Twelve metres to the south-west, a second fulacht fia was found and excavated during the same project, suggesting this corner of the Mayo landscape was a meaningful, repeatedly visited location in prehistory.