A fulacht fia, the term used for these ancient cooking sites, typically consists of a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and shattered stone surrounding a trough or pit. The method was straightforward: stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled pit to bring it to a boil. The stones cracked and became useless with repeated heating, and the discarded fragments accumulated into the mounds archaeologists now find across the Irish landscape. The example at Curraheen, near the Maglin River in County Cork, was not found through conventional fieldwork but turned up during pre-construction testing ahead of the N22 Ballincollig Bypass.

Excavated in 2002, the site presented as a spread of heat-shattered stones and charcoal-enriched soil measuring roughly 8 metres north to south and 7.5 metres east to west, though only a shallow 3 centimetres of deposit survived at the surface. Much of the original material had already been broken up and mixed into the surrounding topsoil by centuries of agricultural activity. Beneath the spread, excavators uncovered a subcircular pit measuring approximately 2.35 by 2.1 metres and 0.45 metres deep. Its lower fill held heat-shattered stones and charcoal-enriched soil; above that sat a secondary layer of re-deposited subsoil mixed with the same burnt material, suggesting the pit had been partially cleaned out or had gradually silted up between episodes of use. The site lay in a flat, marshy area roughly 10 metres north of the Maglin River, exactly the kind of low-lying, water-adjacent ground where fulachtaí fia are most commonly found. Strikingly, it was not an isolated discovery: a cluster of at least six further fulachtaí fia and burnt mounds was identified approximately 180 metres to the north-east, all uncovered as part of the same road scheme and excavated under the direction of E. Danaher.