In Shankill, County Kilkenny, the laying of the Cork-to-Dublin gas pipeline did exactly that, slicing through the floor of a north-east to south-west running valley and bringing to light two postholes, a spread of burnt stone, and charcoal. The kind of find that goes unnoticed by almost everyone except the archaeologist on site.

The site sits in poor marshy pasture on gently south-east sloping ground, the sort of low-lying, damp terrain that tends to preserve organic and heat-altered material reasonably well. Burnt stone spreads of this kind, sometimes called fulachta fiadh in the Irish tradition, though that identification is not confirmed here, are among the most commonly found prehistoric features in Ireland. They are generally interpreted as the remains of cooking or heating activity, where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into water-filled troughs to bring the water to temperature. The postholes found alongside the burnt material suggest some form of structure was once present, though exactly what remains unclear from the available evidence. The discovery was recorded by Sleeman in 1983.