What makes this site quietly interesting is not what it is in isolation, but what it sits beside: a fulacht fiadh, the term for a type of prehistoric cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and fire-cracked stone beside a former trough or pit. The earthworks at Gurteenard were considered so closely bound up with that neighbouring feature that they were not catalogued as a separate monument at all.

The banks and surface variations were recorded in 1976 by John Barber of University College Cork, who noted them lying to the south and south-west of the fulacht fiadh. They are described as low and ill-defined, which is partly a consequence of the ground having been under cultivation. Ploughing is one of the more effective ways of gradually erasing subtle earthworks, smoothing out the gentle rises and hollows that might otherwise preserve a readable outline. Whether the earthworks represent a boundary, an enclosure edge, or something associated with the use of the fulacht fiadh itself is not established in the available record. Their relationship to the cooking site remains suggestive rather than explained.