Burnt mounds, known in Irish archaeology as fulachtaí fia, are found in their thousands across the country, yet they rarely attract much attention. They typically appear as kidney-shaped or horseshoe-shaped heaps of fire-cracked rock, usually blackened and mixed with charcoal-rich soil, and they cluster near water sources with a consistency that has long fascinated researchers.

The leading interpretation is that these sites functioned as cooking places, used during the Bronze Age, roughly between 2000 and 500 BC. The method involved heating stones in a fire and then dropping them into a water-filled trough, bringing the water to a boil quickly enough to cook meat. Over repeated use, the stones would crack and fracture, becoming useless for further heating, and were discarded into the growing mound nearby. Some researchers have also proposed that the troughs may have served as hot baths or even as part of textile processing, and the debate has never been fully settled. What is agreed is that the labour involved was considerable, and that the sites were revisited often enough to accumulate the substantial mounds that survive today.