A grassed-over mound, up to 1.6 metres high and roughly six and a half metres across at its widest point, has been clipped by the trackway, and where the edge has broken open, the fill is unmistakable: shattered, fire-cracked stone and dark, humic earth. This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found across Ireland in enormous numbers, typically Bronze Age in date. The usual interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil, after which the cracked, spent stones were raked aside. Repeat that process over generations and the discarded material accumulates into precisely the kind of kidney-shaped or subcircular mound visible here.

The site at Cartrún An Phóna consists of a subcircular stone-defined area measuring roughly 4.2 metres north to south and 5 metres east to west, with the larger mound adjoining it on its eastern and south-eastern sides. That mound, the accumulated debris of repeated use, is where the trackway damage has exposed the interior material. What makes the location quietly interesting is not just the site itself but its company. A stone row, a linear arrangement of standing stones whose purpose remains a matter of debate among archaeologists, lies on the valley floor approximately 300 metres to the north. Two further fulachta fiadh sit within the same valley, one roughly 305 metres to the east-southeast and another around 730 metres to the east. The clustering of these features along the Gleann Glaise valley suggests sustained prehistoric activity here, with the river providing the reliable water source that fulachta fiadh consistently seem to require.

The damage caused by the trackway, though unfortunate for the site's integrity, has at least made the burnt stone fill directly visible at the mound's broken edge, which is more than most such sites reveal at a glance. The broader valley, with its river, its stone row, and its trio of cooking mounds, reads as a landscape with a long and layered past, most of which remains quietly under the grass.