To the untrained eye it might read as nothing more than a slight rise in the waterlogged ground, but it is almost certainly the remnant of a fulacht fia, one of the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland and yet one of the least understood in terms of what exactly went on at them. The prevailing theory is that these sites were used for cooking, with stones heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil. The burnt and shattered stones, discarded after use, accumulated over time into the horseshoe-shaped or oval mounds that survive today.

What makes the Moyny site particularly notable is that it does not stand alone. It is one of a cluster of four such monuments in the same area, the others recorded nearby under the same site group. This kind of clustering is not unheard of with fulachta fiadh, and the presence of a convenient stream to the west fits the pattern closely; a reliable water source was essentially a prerequisite for the activity these sites represent. The monuments are thought to date broadly to the Bronze Age, roughly 2000 to 500 BC, though the type persisted across a long span and individual sites can be difficult to date precisely without excavation.