What is exposed here, in the cut face of a bank beside a farm road, is almost certainly the remains of a fulacht fiadh, or burnt mound, one of the most common yet persistently mysterious monument types in the Irish archaeological landscape. These spreads of heat-shattered stone and scorched earth are found in their thousands across Ireland, usually in low-lying or riverside ground, and are generally dated to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC. The working theory, though not universally agreed upon, is that stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, the cracked and spent stones being discarded into a growing mound nearby. What exactly was being cooked, brewed, or processed in this way remains open to debate. At Gortlahard, the low mound measures approximately two metres across on its south-west to north-east axis, and the burnt horizon is visible where the bank has been cut away, offering a rare cross-section through what would otherwise be an unassuming rise in a field.