A fulacht fia is a type of ancient outdoor cooking place, typically consisting of a mound of heat-shattered stones discarded beside a water-filled trough. The usual interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into the trough to bring water to the boil, which could then be used to cook meat or serve other purposes. The Belleek example, excavated in 1998 under licence number 98E0284, conformed closely to this pattern. The mound measured roughly 13.5 metres north to south and 11.5 metres east to west, rising only between 0.2 and 0.5 metres above the surrounding ground, a low and easily overlooked feature. It was composed of sandstone and limestone fragments, split by repeated heating and cooling, set in a matrix of black soil and charcoal. Beneath the north-eastern edge of the mound, excavators uncovered an oval trough measuring 1.55 metres in length and 0.55 metres deep, with steeply sloping sides and a concave base. Notably, the trough filled naturally with water during the excavation, a reminder that the site's original users had chosen this waterlogged, marshy location quite deliberately. The mound itself had been levelled at some point in the past, and later activity had left its own marks: an eighteenth or nineteenth-century drainage channel cut through the deposit, and a modern pit containing a horse skeleton had been dug into it. Twenty metres to the south-east, a second fulacht fia was identified and also excavated, suggesting that this damp ground on the edge of Ballina had been a focus for this kind of activity across a broader stretch of prehistoric time.