They appear as low, horseshoe-shaped mounds, typically found near water, and represent what are thought to be Bronze Age cooking sites, places where stones were heated in fire and then dropped into water-filled troughs to bring the liquid to a boil. The cracked and fire-shattered stones, discarded after use, built up over time into the distinctive mounds that survive today. One such monument lies in the townland of Cloheen By., in County Cork, a quiet addition to a landscape that holds far more prehistoric activity beneath its surface than is immediately obvious.

The fulacht fia as a monument type dates broadly to the Bronze Age, roughly 2000 to 500 BC, though some examples have produced dates outside this range. Ireland has an unusually high concentration of them, with Cork and Tipperary among the counties most densely scattered with examples. The precise function of individual sites has been debated; while bulk cooking remains the dominant explanation, some researchers have proposed uses ranging from textile processing to bathing. Whatever their purpose, the labour involved in gathering, heating, and repeatedly using the stones, and the fact that the same site was often returned to over generations, suggests these were meaningful places within their local communities rather than casual campsites.