It is the kind of feature that reads, at a glance, as nothing more than a slight irregularity in the ground. But this is a burnt mound, a class of prehistoric site found across Ireland and Britain, formed from the accumulated debris of a process that involved repeatedly heating stones in fire, dropping them into water-filled troughs to bring the water to a boil, and discarding the cracked and spent stones in a growing heap nearby. The result, over time, is exactly this: an elongated rise of heat-shattered material, now sod-covered and softened by centuries of growth.

The mound at Lissatava measures roughly seven to ten metres northwest to southeast and somewhere between fifteen and eighteen metres northeast to southwest. Its surface is uneven and irregular, suggesting it has been partly levelled at some point, and its southern edge has taken a further knock from a watering hole, approximately six metres in diameter, dug in more recent times for farm stock. A ring of upcast soil encircles that hollow, a small modern disturbance sitting against a much older one. What makes the location particularly notable is that a fulacht fia, the Irish term for a burnt mound site of this type, lies approximately thirty metres to the northeast. The two features sitting in such proximity suggests this wet, low-lying ground was returned to repeatedly, its access to water making it useful across time. A well shown on the 1930 Ordnance Survey six-inch map once sat adjacent to the mound, another indication that water availability shaped how this corner of the landscape was used.