This particular fulacht fia, found near Kilbrien in County Cork, came to light not through a planned research dig but because a road was being built across it.

Fulachtaí fia (the singular is fulacht fia) are Bronze Age cooking sites, typically identified by the characteristic mounds of heat-shattered stone left behind when rocks were repeatedly heated and plunged into water-filled troughs to bring the contents to a boil. They are found in their thousands across Ireland, usually in low-lying, damp ground. The Kilbrien example was excavated in 2003 ahead of construction work on the N8 Rathcormac-Fermoy Bypass. What the archaeologists found was modest but complete in its essentials: a thin scatter of heat-shattered stones and charcoal-enriched soil surrounding an oval trough measuring 1.6 metres by 1.24 metres, and reaching a depth of 0.54 metres. Around the trough were three stake-holes, likely the remnants of a light wooden frame or cover, along with a smaller irregular pit and two post-holes. The work was published by Cotter in 2006.

The site is a quiet example of how road schemes across Ireland have, over the decades, generated a considerable body of archaeological knowledge almost as a by-product of infrastructure. The Rathcormac-Fermoy Bypass corridor cut through terrain that had clearly seen sustained prehistoric activity, and salvage excavations like this one, however brief, preserve at least a record of what the construction would otherwise have erased without trace.