What lies beneath is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in extraordinary numbers across Ireland, typically dating to the Bronze Age. The usual interpretation is that these were outdoor cooking places where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. The burnt and shattered stones, discarded after use, built up over time into the characteristic horseshoe-shaped mounds that survive across the Irish landscape.

The Doonasleen example is modest in what it shows above ground, but it is not alone. A second fulacht fia sits roughly 110 metres to the north-north-west, suggesting that this corner of North Cork saw repeated or sustained use during prehistory. Whether the two sites were contemporary with one another or represent activity at different periods is the kind of question the surface evidence cannot answer. Cork as a county has one of the densest concentrations of fulachtaí fia in Ireland, and North Cork in particular has yielded a considerable number, making clusters like this one less surprising to archaeologists than they might appear to a casual observer walking the fields.