The term, broadly meaning "cooking place of the deer" in Old Irish, refers to a type of site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a mound of heat-shattered stone and charcoal left behind after repeated cycles of fire and water. The usual interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to boiling point, most likely for cooking, though some scholars have also proposed uses connected to textile processing or bathing.

These sites cluster heavily in the Bronze Age, roughly between 1500 and 500 BC, and Ireland has more recorded examples than almost anywhere else in the world. What survives at Tooreenduff is the characteristic dark, crescent-shaped or spread mound that accumulates over time as spent, cracked stones are cleared from the trough and piled to the side. Now lying in pasture, its surface has long since been colonised by grass, leaving little visible to the casual eye beyond a subtle rise or discolouration in the field. The burnt and fragmented stone beneath, however, is the accumulated evidence of repeated use, perhaps over many generations.