Road construction work in County Kildare in 2005 turned up something that had been quietly sitting at the edge of a peat basin for roughly four and a half thousand years. A fulacht fia, the term used for a type of prehistoric burnt mound associated with cooking or industrial activity, came to light during topsoil-stripping for the Millennium Park Western Link Road at Jigginstown. These sites are among the most common prehistoric monuments in Ireland, yet they remain poorly understood; the working theory is that stones were heated in fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, with the cracked and spent stones accumulating into the characteristic mound over repeated use.

The mound at Jigginstown measured roughly eight metres north to south and nearly seven metres wide, and was composed of burnt sandstone, charcoal, and peaty clay, the typical signature of this kind of site. What made the excavation particularly interesting was the detail preserved around a shallow rectangular trough at the northern edge, measuring approximately one and a half metres long, just over a metre wide, and only twenty centimetres deep. A stake-hole in each corner suggested the trough once held a wooden lining or frame. Immediately to the south, twenty-three stake-holes were recorded, thirteen of which traced the outline of an oval structure, perhaps a working shelter or some ancillary building associated with the activity. Radiocarbon dating placed the mound material between approximately 2480 and 2190 cal BC, and the trough material between 2620 and 2190 cal BC, situating the site firmly in the Earlier Bronze Age. A second fulacht fia lay roughly 400 metres to the west, suggesting this particular stretch of the Kildare landscape saw sustained prehistoric activity rather than a single isolated episode.