Most of the wood was unworked and had already been cut into sections before anyone with an archaeological eye could examine it. One piece, however, survived intact enough to tell a story: a rectangular post, about sixty centimetres long, with a semicircular groove running along two opposite sides and a base carefully shaped to fit a mortice joint.

That shaped post is what ties the site at Pulleen to a specific and ancient technology. Horizontal-wheeled mills, sometimes called Norse mills or tide mills depending on context, differ from the upright waterwheel familiar from later centuries; in the horizontal type, the wheel lies flat beneath the millstone and is driven directly by a fast current of water channelled through a narrow race. The wooden components of the wheel house, the small structure enclosing the wheel mechanism, are among the most archaeologically distinctive elements of these early mills. The Pulleen post closely resembles a piece recovered from Morett, County Laois, which researchers identified as part of exactly such a wheel house wall. The comparison draws Pulleen into a wider pattern of early medieval milling in Ireland, a tradition that left few visible traces above ground and is known largely from chance finds of this kind. The site lies about seventy-five metres east of the River Allow, which would have supplied the water source, though the original channel arrangement is unknown.