No mound, no hollow, no scatter of blackened stone breaking the surface of the low-lying pastureland. The only reason anyone knows this site exists is that a bulldozer, at some point, accidentally destroyed it, and in doing so briefly exposed what had lain quietly beneath the field for potentially thousands of years.

What the ground gave up in that accidental moment was modest but legible: burnt stone and charcoal spread across a rough patch measuring about five metres east to west and two metres north to south, along with a small area of yellow clay, roughly one metre square, towards the centre-south of the disturbed area. These are the hallmarks of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found across Ireland in considerable numbers. The typical interpretation is that such sites were used for boiling water, most likely by heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough. Over time, the cracked and discarded stones accumulated into a horseshoe-shaped mound, usually positioned close to a water source. The Muingbaun site sat about twenty-five metres from a stream, which fits the pattern well. The yellow clay may represent the lining or remnants of just such a trough. The details were recorded by E. Rynne, whose personal communication preserved what the bulldozer's passage had made visible for only a short time before it was lost again, this time permanently.