But the horseshoe-shaped earthwork at Knockans is the remnant of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically beside a reliable water source. The idea behind them was straightforward: stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough, bringing it rapidly to the boil. Over time, the cracked and shattered stones were raked out and piled up, and it is those discarded heaps that form the distinctive curved mounds we see today. At Knockans, the mound measures roughly 21 metres east to west and 16 metres north to south, rising between one and one and a half metres, with a shallow internal area about 6 metres long and 2 metres wide still visible at its open northern end. A strong-flowing stream runs to the north of the site, which is precisely the kind of dependable water supply these monuments required.

The site sits on a slight rise within otherwise low-lying ground, with a hazel-covered ridge running to the northwest. A later field wall, aligned northeast to southwest, cuts along the southeastern side of the mound, a quiet reminder that the landscape kept being used and reorganised long after whoever built the fulacht fia had gone. When the site was annotated by Tom Coffey in 1994 and subsequently listed in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996, the expectation was that three fulachtaí fia might be present at this location. In the end, only this one was confirmed here, though a second example does lie approximately 125 metres to the southwest, suggesting that this particular corner of County Clare was a busy spot at some point in prehistory. Fulachtaí fia are generally dated to the Bronze Age, though some examples have produced earlier or later dates, and their precise function, whether for cooking, textile processing, bathing, or some combination, remains a matter of ongoing discussion among archaeologists.