That is the trace of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically dating from the Bronze Age. The standard interpretation is that such sites were used for boiling water by heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough; the discarded, shattered stones accumulate over time into the low, horseshoe-shaped mounds that survive in the landscape in their thousands.

The Crinnaloo example was recorded on the basis of local knowledge rather than direct inspection; at the time it was noted, a standing crop made any closer examination impossible, and what was documented amounts to the spread of burnt material becoming visible after ploughing. That fragmentary picture is, in its own way, characteristic of how a great many fulachta fiadh enter the archaeological record, noticed by a farmer or a passing observer, logged before the ground closes over again. The site sits within the broader Mid Cork landscape catalogued in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork published in 1997, a region where prehistoric activity left a considerable, if often subtle, mark on the land.