They might be fulachta fiadha, the burnt mounds associated with Bronze Age cooking or industrial activity, which typically form when fire-cracked stones are repeatedly discarded beside a water-filled trough. Or they might simply be natural rises in the ground. The uncertainty is, in its own way, the most interesting thing about them.

A fulacht fia, for those unfamiliar with the type, is usually identifiable by its horseshoe or kidney shape, its dark, charcoal-rich soil, and the presence of a timber-lined trough sunk into the earth nearby, where water was heated by dropping in fire-heated stones. The Curraghadobbin mounds fit none of those criteria neatly. Researcher Will Forbes identified as many as eleven potential fulachta fiadha along this stretch of the Clasha, and the mounds themselves vary considerably in size, ranging from roughly 17 metres in diameter up to a sprawling 51.6 metres by 32.2 metres, with heights between 0.2 and 0.68 metres. That variation alone complicates any tidy classification. The river has been canalised and the surrounding fields reclaimed, so whatever original landscape context might have helped interpret these features has been substantially altered. None of the mounds preserves the classic trough that would confirm a Bronze Age cooking site beyond reasonable doubt.