They appear as low, horseshoe-shaped mounds, typically found beside streams or boggy ground, and for decades archaeologists debated what they were actually for. The prevailing interpretation is that they served as cooking sites, probably dating from the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC. The method involved heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough until the water boiled, and then cooking meat in the heated water. The stones, cracked and shattered by repeated heating and cooling, were discarded into a crescent-shaped mound around the trough, which is the feature that survives in the landscape today.

The example at Caheraphuca, in County Clare, sits in a county that has a particularly dense concentration of prehistoric monuments, owing in part to the remarkable preservation conditions of the Burren and its surrounding areas. The place name Caheraphuca is itself worth a moment's attention. "Caher" derives from the Irish cathair, referring to a stone fort or enclosure, a type of monument common in Clare. "Phuca" connects to the pooka, a shape-shifting spirit from Irish folklore, suggesting the townland carried an uneasy or otherworldly reputation long before anyone thought to record it formally. Beyond its location in this evocatively named townland, the specific details of this particular fulacht fia, its dimensions, condition, and precise setting, are not currently available in the public record.