The grass grows a little thicker here, a little greener, and beneath it lies a concentration of small stones packed into dark, peaty soil. That modest swelling in the earth, roughly eight metres by six, is a burnt mound, the accumulated debris of repeated prehistoric cooking or industrial activity carried out over what may have been centuries.

Burnt mounds are among the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, yet they remain quietly anonymous in the landscape. The typical interpretation is that they represent the waste from fulachta fia, a type of cooking site where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. The cracked and shattered stones were raked out and piled to the side, building up over time into the low horseshoe or oval mounds that survive today. What makes the site at Steelaun particularly interesting is not the mound itself in isolation, but the company it keeps. Within a radius of roughly 85 metres, there are at least three confirmed fulachta fia and a second possible burnt mound, clustering together on this natural terrace below a ridge that rises steeply to the north-west. This kind of grouping suggests the location was returned to repeatedly, perhaps because the boggy, moisture-retaining ground made water readily available, or simply because it sat at a convenient point on a route through the landscape that has long since been forgotten.