Fulachtaí fia are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, low mounds of fire-cracked stone and dark, charcoal-rich soil that accumulate wherever people repeatedly heated water by dropping burning stones into a pit or trough. They date most often to the Bronze Age, though they are not always easy to pin down without radiocarbon dating, and their precise purpose, cooking, brewing, bathing, or some combination, is still debated by archaeologists.

The Calary example was uncovered in 2001 ahead of ground works for a Bord Gáis Éireann pipeline, under Excavation Licence 01E0575. What emerged was a spread of burnt stone and charcoal measuring roughly 3.8 metres by 2.16 metres, surviving to a shallow maximum depth of about ten centimetres, the kind of modest profile that suggests either truncation over time or relatively limited use. About a metre to the north of this spread, excavators found an oval pit, approximately 2.1 metres by 2.16 metres and up to 43 centimetres deep, which would be consistent with the water trough that forms the functional core of a fulacht fia. A second, smaller pit, around 80 centimetres in diameter, was identified to the north-west of the burnt deposit. The site was reported by Ó Néill in 2003.