At the high saddle of land between Croughaun Hill and the Comeragh Mountains in County Waterford, a low grass-covered mound sits quietly beside a small stream running south to north. It measures roughly ten metres by seven, and rises only about forty centimetres from the surrounding ground. To a passing walker it might look like little more than a natural hump in the upland turf. In fact it is a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet least understood monument types in the Irish archaeological landscape.

A fulacht fia is, in simple terms, a Bronze Age cooking or processing site. The typical form consists of a trough dug into the ground, a hearth for heating stones, and a horseshoe-shaped mound of the cracked and spent stones that accumulated over repeated use. The method involved heating rocks in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, a surprisingly efficient technique. The site at Knockaturnory sits at the headwaters of the stream, which would have provided a reliable water source, and a second fulacht fia lies approximately thirty metres to the north, suggesting this particular col saw sustained or repeated activity. The placement near a col, that low crossing point between higher ground on either side, hints at the routes people once took through this mountainous terrain.