When the ground is ploughed, a spread of dark-coloured earth surfaces, distinct enough to catch the attention of local farmers and, eventually, archaeologists. Beneath the grass it can still be identified, sitting quietly in the landscape, waiting for the next time the field is turned.

The obvious explanation for such a spread of dark, scorched-looking soil in an Irish field is a fulacht fiadh, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland. These monuments typically survive as low mounds of burnt and fire-cracked stone, often horseshoe-shaped, situated near water; the stone was heated and dropped into a water-filled trough to cook meat or process materials. They are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish countryside, and dark discolouration in soil near a river would normally point straight to one. At Meeshal, however, the character of the deposit does not match that pattern. The appearance of the dark soil, once examined, was judged inconsistent with fulacht fiadh material, leaving the origin of the spread unresolved. What burned here, or what accumulated to produce this staining, remains an open question.