At Rossbrien in County Limerick, a pair of Bronze Age fulachta fia, the plural of fulacht fia, came to light not through a dedicated research dig but through routine topsoil monitoring ahead of a road scheme. A fulacht fia is essentially an outdoor cooking site, typically consisting of a water-filled trough, a fire, and stones heated in that fire and then dropped into the trough to bring the water to boiling point; the characteristic byproduct is a low mound of heat-shattered stone and charcoal that can persist in the soil for thousands of years. These sites are extraordinarily common across Ireland, yet each excavation tends to yield something particular.

The two sites at Rossbrien, recorded as LI013-169002-, sat just fifteen metres apart. Excavations in 1999 by archaeologist Mary Deevy, conducted under Licence No. 99E0235 as part of the preliminary work for the N20/21 Adare to Annacotty road scheme, found that both had the shallow, circular profile typical of the type, with spreads of charcoal-rich soil mixed through heat-shattered limestone and sandstone. Site A was the more closely examined of the two. Its burnt spread ran to roughly ten metres in diameter but was barely ten centimetres deep, suggesting either modest use or considerable erosion. Beneath that spread, on the western side, excavators uncovered a large subrectangular trough measuring 2.5 metres by 1.9 metres and reaching a maximum depth of 0.55 metres. The trough had been packed with burnt mound material, and at its base three small stake-holes indicated that some form of wooden structure had once lined or framed it, a detail that points to careful construction rather than casual use. The western portion of the site had been damaged, probably repeatedly, by flooding from a nearby river and by the encroachment of tree roots.

The site no longer exists in any visible form; it was excavated ahead of road construction and the results were published in the excavations.ie record for 1999. What remains is documentary rather than physical, accessible through the published excavation report by Deevy and the national sites and monuments record. For anyone interested in fulachta fia as a type, the Rossbrien example is a useful case study precisely because of its ordinariness: two low mounds, fifteen metres apart, beside a flooding river, with a carefully made trough and the faint evidence of woodwork at its base.