That is, in a sense, the point. Somewhere beneath the undulating pastureland at the base of a north-facing ridge in County Tipperary lies a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone and a timber-lined trough. At ground level, this one is entirely invisible.

The site came to light not through archaeological fieldwork in any conventional sense, but as an incidental consequence of a gas pipeline excavation in 1986. That kind of infrastructure work has, over the decades, been responsible for uncovering a surprising proportion of Ireland's buried prehistoric record, cutting through landscapes that had remained undisturbed for millennia. The Crehanagh fulacht fia was recorded under reference BW/18/3 and documented by Gowen in 1988. Fulachtaí fia are generally associated with the Bronze Age, and the prevailing interpretation is that they functioned as outdoor cooking sites, where water in the trough was heated by dropping fire-heated stones into it. Some researchers have proposed alternative uses, including textile processing or bathing, though cooking remains the dominant theory. Whatever its original purpose, the Crehanagh example was buried, built over by centuries of agricultural activity, and forgotten until a pipeline trench broke the surface above it.