In 2001, ahead of works by Bord Gáis Éireann, archaeologists uncovered a fulacht fia at Downshill in County Wicklow, one of the many thousands of these Bronze Age cooking sites scattered across the Irish landscape. A fulacht fia, in its simplest form, is a mound of fire-cracked stone left over from a repeated process of heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. They are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, yet each excavated example adds something to the picture of how people organised their lives in the second millennium BC.

What the excavation uncovered at Downshill was modest but precise. A spread of burnt stone and charcoal measuring 3.3 metres by 2.2 metres, reaching a maximum depth of 0.48 metres, sat within a circular, flat-based depression cut into boulder clay. That depression, measuring 1.35 metres by 0.86 metres, would have served as the trough. Beneath the mound and within the depression, a single post-hole was identified, 0.15 metres in diameter and 0.25 metres deep. Post-holes at fulacht fia sites are sometimes interpreted as evidence of a simple timber frame or shelter over the working area, though their function is not always certain. The excavation was carried out under licence 01E0509, and the findings were published by Ó Néill in 2003.