The term refers to a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically identified by a mound of fire-cracked stone and charcoal that accumulated over repeated use. The general principle involves heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring the liquid to a boil, a method that leaves behind exactly the kind of scorched, fragmented debris recorded here. What makes this particular example worth noting is its scale; the spread is described as large, suggesting either intensive or prolonged use across a considerable area of ground.

Fulachtaí fia are most commonly associated with the Bronze Age, roughly 2000 to 500 BC, though some sites were in use earlier or later. They occur with remarkable frequency in Cork, and the north of the county has yielded numerous examples. The one at Skahanagh More sits in land that has since been converted to agricultural use, which is the fate of many such sites. Reclamation and drainage work, the very processes that make land productive for farming, have a tendency to disturb or obscure the shallow archaeology of these monuments, which is part of why this site registers as diffuse rather than presenting the compact, well-defined mound shape that survives in less-disturbed ground.