The mound, measuring thirteen metres by ten and rising to a modest thirty-four centimetres at its highest point, belongs to a type of prehistoric site known as a fulacht fia, a term used in Ireland for the remains of ancient burnt mounds. The current consensus is that these sites functioned as outdoor cooking places, where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, though some researchers have argued for uses including textile processing or bathing. Either way, the scorched and fractured stones, discarded after each use, gradually accumulated into the characteristic mound shape that survives today.

The site came to attention during archaeological testing carried out ahead of the construction of the N8 Rathcormac-Fermoy Bypass, and was fully excavated in 2003. Beneath the mound, excavators uncovered two successive circular troughs, each packed with heat-shattered stones and charcoal-rich soil, indicating the site had been used, abandoned, and then returned to on at least one later occasion. Radiocarbon dating of material from the primary trough places its use somewhere between 2280 and 1870 BC, placing it squarely in the Early to Middle Bronze Age. Four further pits were found in association with the mound. Perhaps the most telling detail is the company the site keeps: two other fulachtaí fia were identified approximately ten and twenty-five metres to the north-east, suggesting this hilltop beside a spring well was not casually chosen but was, for a period at least, a place people returned to repeatedly, perhaps over generations.