The site at Shinanagh is a fulacht fia, a term used for the characteristic burnt mounds left behind by prehistoric cooking or food-processing activity. The usual interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil; the cracked and blackened stones, no longer useful, were piled to one side. Over time, those discarded heaps became the low, horseshoe-shaped mounds that survive across the Irish countryside in their thousands.

This particular example came to light in 1988 during construction of the Bruff-Mallow gas pipeline, when the ground disturbance exposed a spread of burnt material roughly fourteen metres long and six to eight metres wide, running alongside a field boundary that itself contained further burnt stone. A low mound was also noted sitting just outside the pipeline corridor to the west. What makes the Shinanagh location quietly notable is that it does not stand alone: a second fulacht fia lies only about seventeen metres to the south, the two sites close enough to suggest repeated or concurrent use of this low-lying, level ground over some stretch of prehistoric time.