This one gave nothing away. The field at Stonestown in County Offaly was described as generally flat, with no mound, no slight rise, no surface disturbance of any kind. The burnt spread beneath it only came to light because archaeologists happened to be watching when the ground was being prepared for new forestry planting in November 2021.

The discovery was made by Dominic Delaney and Associates during monitoring work carried out between the 10th and 12th of November 2021, ahead of afforestation under licence from the Forest Service. A spread of burnt material covering roughly eight square metres was found in a field lying about 35 metres northwest of a previously recorded burnt mound. Burnt mounds are among the most common prehistoric monuments in Ireland, typically consisting of heat-shattered stone and charcoal left over from a process that probably involved heating water in a trough, though their precise function, whether for cooking, bathing, or industrial use, is still debated. What makes a burnt spread slightly different is the absence of the characteristic mounding; the material is there, but whatever process produced it left no visible heap. By the time the spread was identified, mounding for tree planting had already been completed across parts of the site to the north and east. A 20-metre exclusion zone was established around the outer edge of the find, and mounding to the west, where no burnt material appeared, was allowed to continue. A substantial ditch along the southern field boundary formed a natural limit in that direction.