A fulacht fia, to use the Irish term, is essentially a burnt mound, the accumulated debris of a cooking method that involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough until the water boiled. The stones crack and shatter with repeated heating and cooling, and over time the discarded fragments build up into a distinctive mound of fire-cracked rock mixed with charcoal-dark soil.

The Stag Park example came to light in 2004 during advance archaeological work ahead of construction of the N8 Mitchelstown relief road. Excavation revealed a spread of heat-shattered stones and charcoal-enriched soil measuring roughly 5.5 metres by 3 metres, though only a few centimetres deep at that point, a sign of how much had already been lost or dispersed over the millennia. Below this spread sat a rectangular trough, approximately 2 metres by 1.3 metres, which would have held the water brought to the boil by the fired stones. Around the trough, excavators uncovered a more complex picture than the mound alone would suggest: six pits, three post-holes, fifteen stake-holes, seven separate deposits, and what appeared to be a metalled surface, that is, a deliberately laid hard floor of compacted material, positioned to the east of the trough and measuring around 2.6 metres by 1.6 metres. Post-holes and stake-holes imply some form of timber structure once stood here, perhaps a simple shelter or working frame, though the evidence stops well short of certainty. The site was documented by Sutton, whose excavation report forms the primary record of the find.