Others vanish so completely that only a scorched memory in the soil confirms they ever existed. At Bawnard in County Cork, there is a fulacht fia, or rather, there was one. A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking site, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stones and charred material left behind after repeated use of a water trough heated by dropping in stones from a fire. They are among the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, found in their thousands, usually in low-lying or marshy ground. The one at Bawnard, however, has left almost nothing to show for itself.

What is known comes from local observation rather than any formal excavation. Burnt material was recorded along a field fence, the kind of scorched, fragmented stone debris that typically points to fulacht fia activity. The fence was subsequently removed, and with it went whatever surface definition the site might once have had. There is now no visible trace remaining above ground. The site sits in that particular category of Irish archaeology where the monument exists more as a note in the record than as anything a person could stand beside and contemplate.