During construction work on the Cork-Dublin gas pipeline, a spread of charcoal and burnt stone was uncovered in a marshy valley bottom, and the find was interpreted as probably part of a fulacht fiadh. These are among the most common prehistoric monuments in Ireland, typically consisting of a mound of fire-cracked stone beside a trough, where water was repeatedly boiled by dropping in heated rocks. They appear in their thousands across the country, usually in low-lying, wet ground, and the site at Shankill fits the pattern almost exactly.

The location is a northeast-to-southwest running valley, the floor of which is described as poor marshy pasture on gently south-eastward sloping land. That kind of wet, marginal terrain is characteristic of fulacht fiadh sites, which are thought to date primarily to the Bronze Age, though debate continues about whether they served as communal cooking places, bathing facilities, or something else entirely. The discovery was recorded by Sleeman in 1983, who noted the spread of material during the pipeline works, preserving at least a partial record of what the ground gave up in the process of being cut through.