It is, in fact, a burnt mound, one of the most common yet least understood monument types in the Irish archaeological record. These features, sometimes called fulachta fiadh in older literature, are the accumulated debris of a cooking or heating process used in prehistoric times: stones were heated in fire, dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and then discarded when they cracked and shattered from the thermal shock. The result, built up over repeated use, is a crescent or kidney-shaped mound of heat-fractured, fire-blackened stone.

This particular mound measures ten metres north to south, nine metres east to west, and stands about sixty centimetres high. A trough area, the hollow into which water was poured and heated stones dropped, opens to the east and measures three metres by two and a half metres. The mound sits immediately to the north of a second, similar feature at the same site, suggesting this corner of the Lee Valley saw repeated, possibly concurrent use. Michael Connolly recorded both features during a survey of the Lee Valley area carried out in 1996 and 1997, placing them within a broader pattern of prehistoric activity along that river corridor in Kerry.