In 2001, during topsoil stripping ahead of that extension, workers uncovered what archaeologists classify as a burnt spread, a layer of soil darkened and altered by fire, the kind of deposit that can sit undisturbed beneath a field for centuries before a machine blade finds it. It is not a dramatic monument; there is no standing stone, no visible earthwork. It is, rather, a stain in the ground, legible only to those who know what they are looking for.

A formal excavation followed in 2004, recorded as Site 2, and what it produced was modest but telling: thin deposits of charcoal-rich soil. That combination, burnt material spread across a defined area, is characteristic of prehistoric activity, though the sparse evidence recovered here does not allow for confident interpretation beyond the basic fact of burning. Charcoal deposits of this kind are often associated with fulachta fiadh, ancient cooking or processing sites typically found near water, where stones were heated in fire and dropped into water-filled troughs. Whether that applies at Mullaghavorneen is not established by the available evidence, and it would be wrong to press the point further than the excavation supports.