That concentration alone is worth pausing over. A fulacht fia, the term used for these prehistoric burnt mound sites, is typically the remains of an outdoor cooking place, most commonly dated to the Bronze Age. The method involved heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and then cooking meat within. The stones crack and shatter with repeated heating, and the accumulated debris, blackened and fire-fractured, slowly builds into the low mounds that survive today.

The principal mound at this site is an irregular spread of burnt material measuring approximately six metres on its longer axis and three metres across, sitting on the north-east bank of the stream. What makes it more legible than many comparable sites is that the burnt layer, some 0.7 metres deep, is also visible in cross-section where the stream bank has eroded and cut through the deposit. The two companion sites lie to the south and south-south-west, at roughly sixty and forty metres distance respectively. Whether such clustering reflects repeated seasonal use of a convenient water source, or the activity of different groups across generations, is the kind of question Bronze Age archaeology rarely settles with certainty. But the grouping is not unusual for Ireland; fulachtaí fia often appear in loose associations near reliable streams, and north Cork has a notable density of them.