But the horseshoe-shaped mound at Kerries is almost certainly the remnant of one of prehistoric Ireland's most common yet least-understood monument types: a burnt mound, or fulacht fiadh. These are found in their thousands across the island, typically beside water and in low-lying, boggy terrain, and they consist of the accumulated debris, fire-cracked stones, charcoal, and ash, left over from repeated episodes of heating water by dropping fire-heated stones into a trough. The leading theory is that these were cooking sites, though some archaeologists have argued for other uses including textile processing or bathing. Whatever their precise function, they were evidently used regularly enough over time to build up substantial mounds of discarded stone.

The Kerries example sits just north of a related complex of three small enclosures and associated stone field boundaries, on the south side of a small east-west flowing stream. It measures 12.7 metres north to south and 14.2 metres east to west across the full span of its arms, rising to about 0.85 metres in height. Opening to the east, it follows the characteristic horseshoe plan, with the open end facing the rectangular trough area, which measures 4 metres by 5.1 metres. That trough depression remains wet and is densely colonised by irises, a quiet indicator of ground conditions that have changed little since the mound was in use. The well-drained, stone-filled body of the mound itself is grass-covered. The site is described and contextualised in Michael Connolly's 2008 doctoral thesis, 'The Prehistoric Settlement of the Lee Valley, Tralee, Co. Kerry: A Landscape Perspective', submitted to University College Cork, which places it within a broader reading of how people organised themselves across this landscape in prehistory.