No mound, no hollow, no marker of any kind breaks the surface of the field. Yet plough the ground and something older than the field itself begins to appear: a spread of burnt and fire-cracked stone, the characteristic signature of a fulacht fia, scattered through the disturbed earth.

A fulacht fia is a type of Bronze Age cooking or processing site found in enormous numbers across Ireland. The typical arrangement involved a trough dug into the ground, lined with wood or stone, filled with water, and heated by dropping fire-heated stones into it. Those stones, once spent and shattered by thermal shock, were cast aside into a mound. Over millennia, the mounds became grassed over and blended into the landscape, which is why so many are noticed only when machinery finally cuts through them. At Farranhavane, the Ballymahane River runs close to the south of the site, which is entirely consistent with how these sites were positioned; proximity to a reliable water source was a practical necessity, and the great majority of fulachtaí fia in Ireland sit near streams, rivers, or boggy ground. The burnt spread at Farranhavane is known mainly through the testimony of the landowner, whose observations during ploughing constitute the primary evidence for its existence and extent.