Described as a spread of dark soil laced with small heat-shattered stones, measuring roughly five metres east to west and six metres north to south, it is easily overlooked by anyone who does not know what the discolouration and fractured rock signify.

Fulachtaí fia, found in their thousands across Ireland and particularly numerous in Munster, are the remains of ancient cooking or processing sites, typically dated to the Bronze Age. The characteristic method involved heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil; repeated heating and rapid cooling caused the stones to crack and shatter, and over time the broken fragments accumulated in a horseshoe-shaped mound around the trough. The dark soil that accompanies such sites is the product of centuries of organic material, ash, and charcoal compressing into the ground. The Ballyvolane example was identified and described by Mary Sleeman, an archaeologist working with Cork County Council, whose observation of that distinctive combination of scorched stone and darkened earth is what places this otherwise featureless area within a much longer human story.