It rises only about 35 centimetres from the surrounding soil, spreads roughly twelve metres from north to south and just over ten metres east to west, and its significance is buried, quite literally, in layers of dark earth and fire-cracked stone.

This is a burnt mound, a class of prehistoric monument found widely across Ireland and Britain, typically dating from the Bronze Age. The usual interpretation is that these sites were used for cooking or bathing: stones were heated in a fire, dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and then discarded in a heap once they had cracked and cooled. Over time, that heap of shattered, heat-blackened stone built up into the low, characteristic mounds we find today. At Gortatlea, probing of the mound confirmed the presence of stone and the dark, charcoal-rich soil that is the signature of repeated burning, though no trough has been identified at this site. The absence of a trough is not unusual; they are often wooden or cut into soft ground and leave little trace. The marshy character of the field, only partially drained, is entirely consistent with where Bronze Age communities chose to establish these sites, which typically required a reliable water source close to hand. The site was examined as part of Michael Connolly's doctoral research into the prehistoric settlement of the Lee Valley near Tralee, which placed individual monuments like this one within a broader landscape of Bronze Age activity in the region.