That absence is itself telling. The site at Ballinteane is a fulacht fia, a type of ancient cooking or heating site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically dating from the Bronze Age. The characteristic form is a horseshoe-shaped or roughly circular mound of fire-cracked stone, the discarded debris from repeated heating, accumulated over many uses. This one is modest in height but measurable in spread, running roughly 10.5 metres east to west and 9.1 metres north to south, and its black, charcoal-rich soil speaks quietly to the fires that were lit here.

The mound is composed of densely packed sandstone fragments embedded in that dark, carbon-stained matrix, the kind of deposit that builds up when stones are heated and plunged into water to bring it to a boil, then discarded once they crack. A stream runs just two metres to the north, aligned roughly west-northwest to east-southeast, which is exactly the kind of reliable water source these sites required. The mound slopes more gently on its northern side, and that gentler slump is thought to indicate where the trough once sat, the water-filled pit, probably timber-lined or dug into the ground, that was the functional centre of the whole operation. The southern edge rises to about 0.8 metres, while the northern rim is considerably lower at around 0.2 metres, consistent with the gradual collapse of material toward where the trough would have been.