Measuring roughly 22 metres north to south and 16.6 metres east to west, and rising only about 20 centimetres above the surrounding ground, it would be easy to walk past without a second thought. What lies beneath the turf, however, is a mass of burnt material, the accumulated debris of prehistoric cooking activity stretching back potentially thousands of years.

The mound is a fulacht fia, a type of ancient cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, particularly in low-lying, waterlogged ground. The typical arrangement involved a trough dug into the earth, filled with water, and heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it. Those stones, once spent, were discarded to the side, building up over repeated use into the horseshoe-shaped or oval mounds that survive today. The burnt and shattered stone is the defining material, and it is precisely this that makes up the mound at Knockaneacoolteen. Most fulachta fia date to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, though some sites show evidence of use across much longer periods. This particular example has been partially levelled over time, which is common on farmland where centuries of agricultural work have gradually reduced the original height of such features.