To a passing eye it might look like nothing more than a slight rise in the ground, perhaps a trick of the soil or a spoil heap from some forgotten agricultural work. In fact it is a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet least understood monument types in the Irish landscape, and it is not alone: a second example of the same kind lies roughly fifty metres to the north.

A fulacht fia (the plural is fulachtaí fia) is essentially a prehistoric cooking site, typically Bronze Age in date, though the term has accumulated various interpretations over the years. The usual form is a horseshoe-shaped or irregular mound of fire-cracked stone and charcoal, built up over repeated use beside a water source. The method involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil, a technique that leaves behind exactly the kind of scorched, fragmented debris visible at Garryantaggart. The site here is unassuming even by the standards of the type, described simply as a low mound, but its pairing with a near neighbour just fifty metres away is quietly interesting. Two such sites in close proximity raises questions about how the area was used and by whom, whether the same community returned repeatedly, or whether the two sites represent overlapping periods of activity.