It was unlicensed digging at this site that prompted a proper archaeological investigation in 2004, and what emerged was not a burial at all but a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet still quietly mysterious monument types in the Irish landscape. A fulacht fia is essentially a Bronze Age cooking place, typically comprising a water trough and a hearth, where stones were heated in fire and then dropped into water to bring it to a boil. Thousands of them survive across Ireland, yet each excavation adds something to the picture of how they were actually used.

The 2004 excavation, directed by O'Brien, uncovered two distinct phases of activity, both dated by radiocarbon analysis to the Middle or Late Bronze Age. In the first phase, a stone-lined trough, roughly 1.3 metres square and 0.4 metres deep, was dug close enough to the stream, some 6.5 metres to the west, to fill naturally with water. A U-shaped hearth chamber opened towards the trough, and the fill of both features contained the characteristic signature of fulacht fia use: heat-shattered stone and charcoal. A flint thumbnail scraper and a notched stone hammer were among the few objects recovered. Shortly after the trough was deliberately backfilled, a second phase began. A subcircular structure, nearly 2.8 metres across, was built on the western side of the hearth using thin vertical stone slabs set edge to edge, with a funnel-shaped entrance gap on the western side. A paved path of flat slabs extended roughly five metres westward from the hearth through this entrance, probably reaching all the way to the stream. The excavator interpreted this structure as a possible cooking house, and noted a small box-like feature beside the hearth that may have functioned as a flue. The two phases appear to have followed one another closely in time, suggesting the site was reconfigured rather than abandoned and reoccupied after a long gap.

The monument was reinstated after excavation, so the site today looks much as it did before the dig, a low and unassuming feature in rough grazing land beside a stream, its Bronze Age story now buried again beneath the surface.