That is, in a sense, the whole point. Somewhere beneath a patch of waterlogged reclaimed pasture at the base of a north-east-facing ridge in County Tipperary lies a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in large numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a trough, a hearth, and a mound of fire-cracked stones. This one is entirely invisible at ground level, its presence known only because a pipeline happened to pass through it.

The site came to light in 1986 during gas pipeline excavations, which cut through enough of the buried archaeology to identify and record it. That kind of accidental discovery is not unusual with fulachta fiadh; because they tend to cluster near water sources and low-lying damp ground, they are often buried under the very conditions that preserved them. The sodden, reclaimed pasture at Tinhalla is exactly the sort of environment these sites favour, and the waterlogging that makes the field so unremarkable is likely part of why anything survived at all. The excavation is documented by Gowen in a 1988 report, which places this find within a broader study of prehistoric activity along the pipeline corridor.