These sites typically consist of fire-cracked rock and charcoal-rich soil, the accumulated debris of repeated high-temperature activity carried out over generations during the Bronze Age. They are most often associated with wooden troughs filled with water, into which heated stones were dropped to bring the liquid to a boil, though the precise purpose of that boiling, whether for cooking, bathing, textile processing, or something else entirely, remains a matter of scholarly discussion.

The Ballinameesda example came to light during road improvement works on the N11, when archaeologist Yvonne Whitty excavated the spread of burnt material as part of the scheme. What made the site slightly unusual was the absence of a trough. Most burnt mounds preserve at least the ghost of a wooden or stone-lined pit where water would have been heated, but none was found here. What was found, cut into the upper layers of the burnt spread, was a pit of uncertain function. Two radiocarbon dates obtained from the burnt material placed the feature firmly in the Early Bronze Age, situating it somewhere in the broad sweep of the second and third millennia BC, when this kind of activity was widespread across Ireland and Britain.