The scatter measures roughly six metres across in either direction, which makes it easy to overlook, but its likely origin is anything but ordinary. Archaeologists believe it may be the remnant of a fulacht fiadh, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically identified by a mound of burnt and shattered stone left behind after repeated heating and quenching in water.

Fulachtaí fiadh, the plural form, are among the most commonly recorded prehistoric monuments in Ireland, yet individual examples rarely get much attention. They were in use primarily during the Bronze Age and functioned, in the most widely accepted interpretation, as outdoor cooking facilities. Stones would be heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring the water to boiling point, a process that fractures the rock and leaves the characteristic blackened, crumbly debris that survives in the ground for millennia. The proximity of water was essential to the process, and the Ferta river running approximately two hundred metres to the south of this site fits that pattern closely. The marshy, low-lying ground between the scatter and the river would have provided a reliable water source in prehistory, as it does today.