It is classified as a burnt spread, a category of archaeological feature that tends to get overshadowed by its grander neighbours, yet which carries its own specific weight in the prehistory of the Irish landscape.

Burnt spreads are typically the residue of fulachta fiadh, a term used for ancient cooking or processing sites where water was heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into a trough or pit. The stones, once used, shatter and blacken and accumulate over time into a mound of heat-fractured material, often dark and visibly different in texture from the surrounding soil. The Derreenataggart example is modest, a subcircular area roughly two metres across, slightly raised above the surrounding ground. A rectangular depression near its western edge, measuring approximately two metres by one and a half metres and around sixty centimetres deep, is described as recent in origin rather than prehistoric, suggesting some disturbance or informal excavation has occurred at the site. What lies undisturbed beneath remains a matter for the ground itself.