A fulacht fia, the term for a type of Bronze Age or earlier outdoor cooking place commonly found across Ireland, typically consisted of a mound of fire-cracked stones beside a water source, with a trough dug nearby to hold water that would be heated by dropping in those same stones. The Cloonbulban example, unearthed and then fully excavated during monitoring of the Lough Mask Regional Water Supply Scheme between 2001 and 2002, turned out to be older than most of its kind.

Radiocarbon dating of a charcoal sample from the site produced a date in the Late Neolithic period, somewhere between 2580 and 2335 BC, placing it well before the Bronze Age with which fulachtaí fia are most commonly associated. What survived was a low, irregular spread of heat-shattered sandstone in charcoal-rich soil, measuring roughly 2.28 metres east to west and just under three metres north to south, though it had been disturbed at some point in more recent centuries. Beneath it, cut into boulder clay, was a subcircular trough with steep sides and a flat base, about a metre across and 0.44 metres deep. Fifteen chert artefacts were also recovered from the site. Chert is a flint-like stone used in the Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age for making tools and blades, and its presence here, alongside the unusually early date, adds a layer of complexity to what might otherwise seem a routine find. Perhaps more striking still is that another fulacht fia was identified just 25 metres to the west, suggesting this unremarkable strip of ground beside a Mayo stream was a place people returned to, generation after generation, for reasons that remain genuinely uncertain.