When construction crews began preparatory work on the N22 Ballincollig Bypass in County Cork, archaeological monitors were on site to watch what the machinery turned up. What emerged at Curraheen was not one prehistoric site but six, clustered together in the same patch of ground: a gathering of fulachtaí fia, the enigmatic burnt mounds that are among the most common, and least understood, archaeological features in Ireland.

A fulacht fia, in the simplest terms, is a prehistoric cooking or heating site, typically consisting of a trough that would have been filled with water and brought to temperature by dropping in stones heated in a nearby fire. The stones, once used, fracture and cannot be reused, and so they accumulate in characteristic spreads and mounds of heat-shattered rock mixed with charcoal-blackened soil. The example excavated in 2002 at Curraheen followed this pattern closely. Its rectangular trough measured 1.8 metres by 1.22 metres and survived to a depth of 0.34 metres, packed with heat-shattered stones and charcoal-enriched soil, with fragments of wood still preserved at its base. Surrounding the main trough were further features: an oval pit to the north, a circular pit to the south showing traces of oxidation along its edge, and a linear cut running roughly northeast to southwest for 7.4 metres, also filled with the same signature mixture of burnt stone and dark soil. This particular site lay approximately 30 metres east of its nearest neighbour in the group, suggesting the area saw sustained and perhaps repeated activity over time, though the precise date and purpose of the complex remain, as with most fulachtaí fia, open questions.