It is all that remains of a fulacht fiadh, or burnt mound, a class of prehistoric site found in considerable numbers across Ireland and typically associated with Bronze Age cooking or industrial activity. The original mound was removed during land reclamation, but that narrow horizon of burnt stone and charcoal, measuring roughly 1.4 metres thick, survived the levelling and sits quietly at the edge of a field, overlooking the Glashagoruve River to the south.

Fulachta fiadh, the plural form, generally consist of the accumulated debris from a process of fire-cracking stones, which were heated and then dropped into water-filled troughs to bring them to the boil. The shattered, blackened fragments built up into a horseshoe-shaped mound over repeated use. That the mound at Gurteen was large enough to leave a substantial buried horizon even after being levelled suggests it saw significant or prolonged activity. What gives the site its particular interest is its proximity to a ceremonial landscape: roughly 130 metres to the south-south-east lie a multiple-stone circle and a boulder-burial, the latter being a form of megalithic monument in which a large recumbent stone covers a smaller burial deposit. The grouping of a functional, probably domestic or communal site alongside ceremonial monuments in the same stretch of ground is a reminder that Bronze Age communities did not separate the practical from the ritual as neatly as we might assume.