This is a fulacht fia, a type of ancient cooking site found across Ireland, typically Bronze Age in origin, where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. The mound itself is the accumulated debris of that process, the cracked and fire-shattered stones discarded after each use. At Knockans, that mound measures roughly thirteen metres east to west and just over eleven metres north to south, with the characteristic opening facing north towards the spring that would have supplied the water.

The site was possibly identified by Tom Coffey around 1994. What gives this particular location an added layer of interest is its immediate surroundings. A second fulacht fia lies approximately ninety metres to the south-east, suggesting the area saw repeated or sustained use over time. Roughly fifty metres to the west-northwest sits a cashel, a type of stone-walled enclosure associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, which hints at a longer sequence of human activity in this small corner of Clare. The cliff, the spring, the woodland, and the clustering of monuments together give the place a character that a single isolated find would not.