The site is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking place found in extraordinary numbers across Ireland, typically identified by the distinctive mound of heat-shattered stone and charcoal left behind after repeated use. What makes this particular example quietly noteworthy is its proximity to another of its kind, a second fulacht fia located only about seventy metres to the south-west. Finding two within such a short distance of one another suggests that this stretch of the Knockanroe landscape was a place people returned to, probably over a long period.

The mechanics of a fulacht fia are straightforward. Water was drawn into a trough, usually timber-lined, and heated by dropping fire-heated stones into it until it boiled. The stones, unable to survive many cycles of extreme heat and sudden immersion, eventually shattered, and the broken fragments were discarded into the characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound that archaeologists now use to identify these sites. Most fulachta fiadh date to the Bronze Age, broadly speaking the period from around 2000 to 500 BC, though some may be earlier or later. The Knockanroe site survives as a partially overgrown spread of this burnt material, positioned between the old dry channel and the more recent course of the stream, which gives some sense of how the local hydrology has shifted since the site was in use.