A fulacht fia, sometimes also called a burnt mound, is essentially a prehistoric outdoor kitchen: a trough filled with water, heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it until the water boiled, used for cooking meat and possibly for other purposes such as bathing or textile processing. Thousands of these sites survive across Ireland, yet each excavation tends to produce something a little unexpected.

When archaeologist Donald Murphy opened this particular site in 2000, what emerged was a more complex picture than the mound's surface suggested. The fulacht covered an area of roughly 15.65 metres north to south by 7 metres, and within its north-western quadrant there was a notably dense concentration of charcoal across a patch measuring 5.5 metres by 5 metres. Once that charcoal layer was carefully removed, nine separate pits and depressions appeared beneath it, varying considerably in shape and size. The largest ran to 5 metres in length and 1.5 metres in width; the smallest was less than a metre across. Their depths ranged from 0.25 metres to 0.6 metres, suggesting they were not all dug at the same time or for precisely the same purpose. The clustering of so many distinct features beneath a single burnt deposit points to a site used repeatedly, perhaps over generations, with troughs being dug, abandoned, and superseded by new ones as the work continued.