It measures roughly ten metres north to south and a little over six metres east to west, rising to about eighty-five centimetres at its highest point, with its open end facing west. To a passing walker it might look like a natural undulation in the ground, but the blackened, fire-cracked stone packed inside the mound is the giveaway.

This is a fulacht fia, one of the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, found in the hundreds across the country and particularly dense in Munster. The term, loosely translated from Old Irish, refers to a cooking place associated with roaming hunters, though the precise function of these sites has been debated for decades. The standard interpretation is that water was heated in a trough by dropping fire-heated stones into it, the stones cracking and shattering with the thermal shock and then being discarded into the characteristic mound that accumulates around the trough over repeated use. Some researchers have proposed alternative uses including textile processing or bathing. Whatever the purpose, the burnt and broken stone is the lasting physical record, and at Killaree it forms a mound that has survived on a gentle north-facing slope, preserved beneath centuries of turf and grass.