A fulacht fia, to give the feature its Irish name, is a type of ancient burnt mound, typically associated with prehistoric cooking or food preparation. The method involved heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough until the water boiled, and then using that hot water to cook meat. Over time, the shattered, heat-cracked stones were raked out and piled up, leaving the distinctive horseshoe-shaped mounds that survive across Ireland in their thousands.

The site at Kiltenan North was excavated by Graham Hull under licence reference 02E0664, as part of Bord Gáis Éireann's Pipeline to the West scheme. The pipeline easement cut across land that had previously been shallow bog, sloping gently down towards the north-west, with the Clonshire River running 75 metres to the south-east. The boggy field between the excavation strip and the river contained at least three fulachta fiadh, which is not unusual; these sites tend to cluster near reliable water sources. The mound examined was roughly oval in plan, measuring approximately 14.5 metres east to west and around 7 metres wide, though most of it lay in the adjacent field beyond the excavation corridor. The material itself was a dark brown to black, sandy clay carrying as much as fifty per cent burnt limestone, with charcoal flecking throughout. An old topsoil layer was recorded between separate deposits of fulacht material, suggesting more than one period of use or accumulation at the spot. No trough was identified in the section examined or in the main body of the mound nearby.

Because the excavation was tied to a pipeline corridor, only a narrow strip of the site was formally investigated; the bulk of the mound remains in the neighbouring field and was never fully opened. The absence of a trough is not unusual in itself, as wooden troughs rarely survive and stone-lined examples are not always present. The site is not publicly marked or managed, and the land is agricultural. Anyone with a general interest in fulachta fiadh as a monument type would find the wider Limerick landscape instructive, given how frequently these burnt mounds appear along river and stream margins throughout the county.