What it actually represents is one of the most persistent and widespread features of the Irish Bronze Age landscape: a fulacht fia, essentially the remains of an ancient outdoor cooking site. The mound itself is composed of burnt and fire-cracked stone, the accumulated debris of repeated heating, and a slight depression to its west-southwest is thought to mark where a water trough once sat, the central working element of the whole operation.

The typical fulacht fia worked on a straightforward principle. Stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a trough, usually timber-lined and filled with water, bringing the water to a boil without direct contact with flame. Meat could then be cooked, and experiments in experimental archaeology have shown the method is surprisingly efficient. The characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound of discarded, shattered stone that builds up around such sites is what most often survives, and Ireland has thousands of them, the majority dating to the second millennium BC. At Ballyshonock, the mound has been partially cut by a passageway at some point, which has disturbed part of the accumulated burnt material, though enough remains to read the basic shape of the site. The proximity to a stream would have been no accident; reliable water was the whole point, and fulachtaí fia are found near watercourses with a consistency that amounts to a rule.