These are not ceremonial deposits or votive offerings but hearths, the functional, workaday kind, built to cook food and generate warmth within the inner enclosure of one of Ireland's most imposing prehistoric monuments.

Research excavations in the western half of the inner enclosure uncovered four such hearths in close proximity to one another. Two were found roughly 3.5 metres apart towards the southern end of a trench designated Cutting 1, with two more revealed slightly to the north. The most carefully documented of these, a feature recorded as F246, was stone-lined in a straightforward but considered way: a flat slab formed the base, with single stones set on edge along its eastern and western sides, creating a simple cradle for the fire. When excavated, the fill contained ash and charcoal-flecked clay, along with a small number of limpet shells, suggesting that seafood formed at least a minor part of the diet of the people using this space. No artefacts were recovered from these features, which gives them an almost anonymous quality, but they have been dated to the Late Bronze Age, placing human occupation of the inner enclosure somewhere in the period roughly between 1200 and 600 BC. That dating, drawn from the broader excavation directed by Claire Cotter, adds a layer of specificity to what can otherwise feel like an undifferentiated ancient past at a site that has been visited, studied, and argued over for well over a century.