What was found here is the remnant of a fulacht fia, a type of ancient cooking site found across Ireland in their thousands, typically identified by a kidney-shaped mound of fire-cracked, blackened stone. The usual interpretation is that water was boiled in a trough by dropping heated stones into it, and the discarded burnt material accumulated over repeated use into the distinctive spreads and mounds that survive today. At Knockaneacoolteen, the evidence is less tidy than that, but no less real.

The site came to light during land reclamation in the early 1980s, when the landowner noticed a large spread of burnt material disturbed by the work. The wet, marshy conditions of the field, with its natural springs, are precisely the kind of setting where fulachta fiadh are most commonly found; proximity to a reliable water source was fundamental to how they functioned. Some of the burnt material remains visible in the eastern face of a drain to the west of the find area. A field boundary that once ran along the southern edge of the site was removed and replaced by a deep drain, which has since become overgrown, further obscuring the original extent of the spread.