The name translates roughly as "wild deer cooking place", though the term is something of a romantic misnomer attached by later scholars. What these sites actually represent is a remarkably consistent piece of prehistoric technology: a trough, usually timber-lined and sunk into the ground near a water source, into which heated stones were dropped to bring water to the boil. The evidence for this method is the burnt and shattered stone that accumulates over repeated use, forming the characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound that survives in fields and bogs across the country.

Fulachtaí fia are among the most commonly recorded monument types in Ireland, with the majority dating to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, though some sites show evidence of use into the early medieval period. They are almost always found close to streams, springs, or boggy ground, since a reliable water supply was essential to the whole operation. The Ardmaclancy example sits within a part of Clare that, like much of the west of Ireland, preserves prehistoric remains with unusual frequency, partly because later intensive agriculture never fully erased them. Whether this particular site was used for cooking, brewing, bathing, or some combination of purposes remains an open question; experimental archaeology has demonstrated that all of these were plausible uses for the same simple technology.