They appear as low, kidney-shaped or crescent mounds of fire-cracked stone and charcoal-dark soil, typically sitting close to a water source, and Carrowdotia in County Clare is home to one such example. The mounds are thought to result from a repeated process of heating stones in a fire and then plunging them into a water-filled trough, bringing the water rapidly to the boil. What exactly this was for has occupied archaeologists for decades. Cooking, bathing, textile processing, and hide preparation have all been proposed, and it is likely that different communities used the method for different purposes at different times.

Burnt mounds of this type date broadly to the Bronze Age, roughly 2000 to 500 BC, though some examples have produced dates outside that range. The Irish term fulacht fiadh, sometimes applied to them, carries older folklore associations with outdoor cooking by roving bands of warriors, though modern archaeology tends to treat that connection with caution. The sheer number of these sites across Ireland, Clare included, suggests they were a routine part of life rather than anything ceremonial or exceptional. What makes each individual example of interest is precisely that ordinariness: a patch of scorched ground in a townland like Carrowdotia quietly preserving the residue of someone's working day, more than three thousand years ago.