A fulacht fia is, broadly speaking, a prehistoric cooking site, typically consisting of a mound of heat-shattered stone accumulated beside a trough that would have been filled with water and heated by dropping fire-reddened rocks into it. Thousands of these sites are known across Ireland, the majority dating to the Bronze Age, and their precise function remains a matter of some debate, with cooking the most widely accepted explanation, though uses ranging from bathing to textile processing have also been proposed. At Knockanroe, the monument sits on a west-facing slope on the northern side of a ravine, and it is in the exposed section of that ravine that the burnt spread of material becomes visible, the gradual erosion of the bank having cut through what is otherwise a grass-covered feature in the surrounding pasture. The location is typical in one respect: fulachta fia are frequently found near water sources or on low-lying ground where moisture would have been readily available.