During a field survey, archaeologists identified it as a fulacht fia, a type of ancient cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically dating to the Bronze Age. The usual arrangement involves a trough, a hearth, and a mound of fire-cracked stone, where water was heated by dropping in stones that had been brought to temperature in a fire. What made this particular find worth noting was the material surrounding it.

The stone layer was found within what the original survey describes as a highly organic matrix, a dense mixture of charcoal, wood, clay, and sand, which extended for some thirteen metres. That kind of preserved organic context is relatively unusual, and it speaks to the degree to which the boggy ground at Derryville has kept the site intact over millennia. Peat bogs act as a natural archive, their acidic, waterlogged conditions slowing decomposition to a near standstill, which is why discoveries made within them so often retain material that would long since have vanished in drier ground. The find was recorded by Gowen in 1999 as part of survey work at Derryfadda, and later compiled into the archaeological inventory of North Tipperary by Jean Farrelly and Caimin O'Brien.