The one at Cunnagher in County Mayo is a typical representative of a type that appears in almost every townland, a low horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone and dark, charcoal-rich earth, sitting close to a natural water source. The name itself, roughly translated as "cooking place of the deer" or sometimes linked to wandering hunters, points to the dominant theory about their function: that these were outdoor cooking sites, where stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to boiling point. Experiments have shown the method works efficiently, bringing a reasonable volume of water to a full boil in under half an hour.

These sites date broadly to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, though some examples in Ireland have returned earlier radiocarbon dates. The mound itself is essentially the accumulated debris of repeated use, the cracked and spent stones discarded each time after they had done their work. Because the stones fracture and lose their heat-retaining properties once used, fresh ones had to be gathered for each session, which is why the mounds grew over time into the distinctive shapes archaeologists recognise today. Whether the troughs were used solely for cooking meat, or also for brewing, bathing, or some combination of purposes, remains a live debate in Irish archaeology. The site at Cunnagher contributes one more data point to a distribution that covers the island so thoroughly it suggests these features were once a routine part of Bronze Age life rather than anything ceremonial or exceptional.