It came to light only because a new road was coming through. What the excavators found was a fulacht fia, a type of site encountered repeatedly across Ireland, consisting of a mound of fire-cracked stones accumulated beside a water-filled trough. The stones would have been heated in a fire and dropped into the trough to bring the water to a boil, though exactly what that boiling was used for, cooking, bathing, textile processing, or something else entirely, remains a matter of debate among archaeologists.

The mound at Ballykeoghan measured roughly 7.5 metres east to west and 8 metres north to south, and excavation in 2006, carried out in advance of the N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford road scheme, revealed two possible troughs beneath it, along with an area of burnt clay that may represent the remnants of a hearth. A sample of hazel charcoal taken from one of the troughs was submitted for radiocarbon dating and returned a calibrated date of between 1626 and 1501 BC, placing activity here firmly in the Bronze Age. The mound extended eastward beyond the limits of the excavation, so its full extent was never established. A single flint flake was recovered from the trough fill, too unspecific to tell us much on its own. Notably, the site did not exist in isolation: around 140 metres to the northwest, excavations uncovered metalworking sites, post-holes, and pits, suggesting a cluster of Bronze Age activity across this stretch of landscape, the fulacht fia perhaps one component of a broader working settlement rather than a solitary curiosity left behind in a field.