That is how many fulachtaí fia come to light: not through deliberate excavation but through the incidental disturbance of ground that nobody expected to be archaeologically significant. A fulacht fia, broadly speaking, is a prehistoric cooking place, typically identified by a mound of fire-cracked stone left over from repeated heating and water-boiling, often associated with a trough or pit in which food was cooked.

The Carrickmines site was identified in 1998 when topsoil-stripping for the pipeline revealed a spread of burnt stone and charcoal measuring 7.5 metres north to south and 6 metres across, sitting in a loose, silty clay matrix. The spread had not survived intact. A field drain running north to south had cut directly through the middle of it, slicing the deposit in two before anyone knew it was there. Beneath the eastern portion of the site, excavators found a pit measuring roughly 0.95 metres by 0.7 metres and up to 0.42 metres deep, filled with burnt material so similar in character to the surrounding spread that the two could not be distinguished from one another. A single flake of struck flint was recovered from the site, a small but telling detail suggesting human activity. The excavation was recorded by O'Neill and published in 1999 and 2000, with the site compiled for the record by Geraldine Stout.

There is nothing to see at Carrickmines today, and the site itself is not accessible as a visitor destination. Its interest lies less in what remains above ground and more in the circumstances of its discovery and what those circumstances reveal about the archaeology of suburban Dublin. The area around Carrickmines has seen considerable development pressure over the decades, and sites like this one illustrate how much prehistoric activity lies beneath landscapes that appear, on the surface, entirely ordinary. For those interested in the broader distribution of fulachtaí fia across Ireland, the published record by O'Neill remains the primary source for this particular site.