The one recorded near Cloheen townland in County Cork is typical in that respect: a low, horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone and dark, charred soil, sitting quietly in the landscape with very little to announce what it once was.

The name fulacht fia translates roughly as "cooking place of the deer," though that interpretation has long been disputed. The standard explanation, supported by experimental archaeology, is that these sites were used for heating water by dropping stones, first made red-hot in a fire, into a water-filled trough. The cracked and shattered stones were then discarded into a mound around the trough, which is what survives today. Most date to the Bronze Age, broadly speaking the period between around 2000 and 500 BC, though some sites have yielded dates outside that range. What was actually being cooked, brewed, or processed in these troughs remains a subject of genuine debate among archaeologists, with proposals ranging from meat and fish to ale and textiles. The Cloheen example is one of many such monuments recorded across Cork, a county particularly well represented in the national distribution of these sites.