There was no pottery, no metalwork, no obvious structure. Just fire-cracked rock, scattered across an irregular patch of tillage ground, the kind of find that raises more questions than it answers.

Burnt mounds of this type are among the more enigmatic features of the Irish archaeological landscape. They tend to be associated with fulachta fia, a term used for prehistoric cooking or processing sites where stones were repeatedly heated and plunged into water-filled troughs to raise the temperature. The repeated heating and sudden cooling causes the stones to shatter and blacken, and over time the discarded fragments accumulate into the characteristic mound shape. What is particularly interesting about the Garrane site is that it sits just seven metres from another feature recorded as a possible fulacht fiadh, suggesting the two may be related, perhaps part of the same episode of activity or the same recurring use of a favoured spot. Whether they are broadly contemporary or separated by generations is not something the surface evidence alone can settle.