A ploughed field on a south-facing slope in Ballyshonock, County Waterford, holds the invisible remains of what may once have been a prehistoric cooking site. There is nothing to see now, the land having been turned over by agriculture until any surface trace has vanished entirely, yet the spot was recorded around 1950 as a possible fulacht fia, the Irish term for a burnt mound, a type of site found widely across Ireland and dating typically to the Bronze Age. These features are characterised by a horseshoe-shaped mound of shattered, fire-cracked stone and charcoal, the accumulated debris of repeated heating. Water was brought to the boil by dropping stones heated in a fire directly into a trough, and the cracked, spent stones were then discarded to the sides, building up the mound over time. Their precise purpose, whether cooking, bathing, textile processing, or something else, remains a matter of ongoing discussion among archaeologists.

The site sits towards the lower end of a gentle slope, a position consistent with many fulacht fia sites, which tend to cluster near water sources or in low-lying ground where moisture would have been readily accessible. The identification as a possible example of this type dates to a National Museum of Ireland file from around 1950, suggesting it came to official attention during a period of broader archaeological recording rather than through any focused excavation. No further investigation appears to have followed, and subsequent ploughing has since removed whatever mound material remained visible at ground level.