The burnt material turned up in the machinery tracks, which is, archaeologically speaking, a deeply unglamorous way to announce yourself after several thousand years of silence.

A fulacht fia is a Bronze Age cooking site, typically consisting of a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and fire-cracked stone beside a trough, usually timber-lined, into which water was poured and heated by dropping in fire-heated stones. The stones fracture and blacken with repeated use, and it is precisely this scorched, crumbled material that accumulates into the characteristic mound. They are found in enormous numbers across Ireland, often in low-lying or marshy ground, and while their primary function as cooking sites is widely accepted, some researchers have proposed additional uses including bathing or industrial processing. The example at Moanlahan offered up its burnt stone not through careful excavation but through the incidental violence of a building project, leaving its full extent and condition a matter of some uncertainty.