But what lies beneath a ploughed field on the western slope of a low glacial ridge near Killoran, in County Tipperary, is the trace of a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet persistently puzzling monument types in the Irish landscape. These are the remains of ancient burnt mound sites, found in their thousands across Ireland, typically associated with the Bronze Age. The standard interpretation is that stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, leaving behind exactly the kind of broken, heat-shattered stone and ash that survives here.

The site came to light not through excavation but through field walking, the methodical practice of traversing ploughed ground on foot to spot surface material that the plough has turned up. At Killoran, this approach revealed the spread of burnt sandstone and charcoal sitting on the edge of partially reclaimed bogland, the kind of damp, low-lying ground where fulachta fia are very often found, presumably because water was readily available nearby. The glacial ridge on whose slope it sits is a remnant of the last ice age, and the boggy terrain at its foot would have been a familiar, functional landscape for Bronze Age communities. The site was recorded by Stevens in 1999 but was never excavated, a decision made on practical grounds: it lay outside any area earmarked for development, removing the usual urgency that brings archaeologists in with trowels and section drawings.