A fulacht fia, the term used for these burnt mounds, is thought to represent a cooking or processing site where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. The example at Clonee in County Meath is less a single monument than a palimpsest, two separate fulachta fia so closely overlaid that they read, at first, as one.

The site came to light between December 2015 and October 2018, when archaeologists P. Duffy, D. Bayle, and J. Whitaker monitored topsoil stripping across roughly 92 hectares of land in the townlands of Clonee, Portan, and Gunnocks. The work identified 37 locations of potential archaeological importance across the wider area; this particular site, designated Site 13, was excavated under licence by D. Bayley. The burnt mound presented as a spread of broken and fire-cracked stone set in a black clay matrix, measuring approximately 15 metres northeast to southwest and 8 metres across, sitting just south of a small canalised stream that forms the townland boundary with Portan. Beneath and within the mound, the excavators found four troughs. Three of these, clustered close together along the western edge, probably belonged to one original monument, while a smaller trough roughly 12 metres to the southeast appeared to be a separate installation. Radiocarbon dates from charcoal samples placed the western troughs in the range 2439 to 2144 cal. BC, and the smaller southeastern trough somewhat earlier at 2456 to 2204 cal. BC, firmly within the Early Bronze Age. A possible hearth nearby returned a slightly later date of 2015 to 1774 cal. BC, suggesting the site was visited and used across several centuries. Before any of this activity, the ground had already seen domestic use; four pits containing animal bone, including deer antler, cattle, sheep or pig, and horse, were sealed beneath the mound material and pre-date the monument's active life. One pit on the eastern side of the cluster retained a short slot-trench on its edge, interpreted as the trace of a wind-break. Not everything at the site is Bronze Age, however; an early medieval charcoal-making pit was also identified, a reminder that useful ground near water tends to attract people across very different eras. The mound itself had been further disturbed by medieval and post-medieval drains and furrows, so what survives represents only a portion of what was once there.