No mound, no earthwork, nothing to suggest that prehistoric activity had taken place there at all. It was only in 2019, during routine archaeological testing ahead of a proposed housing development, that excavation revealed a fulacht fia concealed entirely beneath the topsoil. A fulacht fia is a type of ancient cooking or heating site, typically consisting of a water-filled trough and a mound of burnt, heat-shattered stones that accumulated as hot rocks were repeatedly plunged into water to raise its temperature. The Ardoughan example had left absolutely no mark on the landscape above ground.

Excavation by Richard Crumlish in 2019 uncovered the full structure, sitting close to the base of an east-facing slope and resting directly on natural grey and cream clay subsoil. The burnt mound itself measured over ten metres north to south, was horseshoe-shaped in plan, and opened to the east. Beneath it lay a subrectangular trough, roughly 1.6 metres by one metre and up to half a metre deep, with steep sides and a flat base. A large, partly heat-shattered boulder sat on the trough floor, positioned centrally in its western half. Immediately to the north of the trough, seventeen stakeholes were arranged in two parallel rows oriented roughly east-northeast to west-southwest. Whether they represent the remains of a wooden frame, a windbreak, or some other structure is unclear, but their regularity suggests deliberate construction rather than incidental use. A separate oval pit, filled entirely with burnt mound material, was found half a metre to the west of the trough, and it too contained stakeholes cut into its base. No artefacts were recovered from the excavation. Intriguingly, a second fulacht fia was found just twenty metres to the south, suggesting that this part of the Ardoughan landscape saw repeated or sustained use across the prehistoric period.