They are easy to miss, the kind of subtle humps in the landscape that most walkers would step around without a second thought. Yet these mounds are the remains of fulachtaí fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically Bronze Age in date, and almost always located near a reliable water source. The usual arrangement involves a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and fire-shattered stone surrounding a timber-lined trough, into which water was heated by dropping fire-heated stones. The stones crack and fragment with repeated use, and it is this accumulation of discarded, heat-broken material that forms the distinctive mounds visible today.

The larger of the two mounds here sits within a sub-rectangular depression measuring 12.5 metres in length and 4.6 metres in width, sunk to an average depth of around half a metre. The oval mound associated with it reaches 14 metres north to south and 10 metres east to west, rising to 0.75 metres in height. Excavation, carried out under licence reference 97E0022, revealed a probable trough pit within that depression, consistent with the classic fulacht fia form. A second, smaller mound lies immediately to the west, roughly 6.7 metres in diameter and 0.5 metres high. It does not conform precisely to the standard morphology, but a spread of fire-shattered stone some 4 metres in diameter was recorded there after the mound itself had been removed ahead of excavation, suggesting a similar function. Both sites are described and contextualised in Michael Connolly's 2008 doctoral thesis for University College Cork, which examined prehistoric settlement across the broader Lee Valley and Tralee landscape.

The setting adds a layer of context that the bare measurements alone cannot convey. The foothills here look out over a wide arc of lowland, from the east around through south towards Tralee Bay to the south-west. Whoever used these sites had both water underfoot, in the form of the marshy ground that still characterises the area, and an open view across a landscape that was already being shaped by human activity thousands of years ago.