At the edge of a peat bog near Cahircalla More in County Clare, test trenching carried out in 2003 ahead of the Ennis Bypass and Western Relief Road broke through to something far older than tarmac: a cluster of prehistoric burnt mounds, buried just below the bog surface and invisible until the machines arrived.

Excavation in 2004 revealed seven discrete mounds in total. The area recorded here, designated Area i, consisted of two irregular spreads of fire-cracked stone, the larger measuring roughly 9.5 metres by 6.8 metres and the smaller just 3.7 metres by 1.9 metres, both less than five centimetres deep. The stone was mostly limestone with some sandstone present. Burnt mounds of this type, known in Irish archaeology as fulachta fiadh, are among the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, though their precise function is still debated; the leading theory holds that stones were heated in a fire and dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, the mound itself being the accumulated heap of stone that shattered in the process. A radiocarbon date obtained from the Cahircalla More site places it in the period 2470 to 2210 cal BC, placing its use squarely in the Early Bronze Age, when this kind of cooking or processing site was in widespread use across the island. The bog setting is typical; low-lying, waterlogged ground was both a reliable water source and a preserving medium for the organic materials that rarely survive elsewhere.