A fulacht fia is a prehistoric cooking site, typically consisting of a trough dug into the ground, a hearth for heating stones, and a mound of those same stones once they had been used and discarded. The stones crack and shatter when repeatedly heated and plunged into water, and over time the accumulated debris forms a distinctive horseshoe-shaped mound, usually dark and charred in appearance. At Carrigathou, that mound has been reduced to a scatter of burnt material, but the evidence is still legible to those who know what they are looking at.

What makes this particular site quietly interesting is its proximity to another fulacht fia located roughly 100 metres to the south-east. The clustering of such sites is not unusual across Ireland, where fulachtaí fia are often found in lowland or waterside settings and occasionally in close groupings, though the reasons for this are not fully understood. Whether the two sites at Carrigathou were in use at the same time, or represent activity at different periods, is unknown. Most fulachtaí fia in Ireland are thought to date broadly to the Bronze Age, though some have produced dates ranging from the Neolithic through to the early medieval period.