A farmer had ploughed and harrowed a relatively flat field, and the disturbance was enough to bring the evidence to the surface: a scatter of burnt stone, sub-oval in outline, measuring roughly nine metres on its longer axis and six on its shorter. Sitting only five to ten centimetres below the loosely worked soil, it had been there all along.

Burnt mounds are among the more enigmatic features of the Irish archaeological landscape. They consist of heaps of fire-cracked stone, usually associated with a nearby water source and a trough or pit, and they are thought to date primarily to the Bronze Age, somewhere between 2000 and 500 BC. The working theory is that stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it rapidly to the boil, though what exactly that boiling water was used for, whether cooking, bathing, textile processing, or something else entirely, remains a matter of ongoing debate. The Carrownurlaur example was identified in July 2014, brought to attention by Dr James Bonsall, and the spread of material recorded on the ploughed surface gave enough information to establish its basic shape and shallow depth, even before any formal excavation.