What looks from a distance like an unremarkable rise in soggy ground is in fact a fulacht fia, the remains of a prehistoric cooking site. The typical method involved heating stones in a fire until they were near-cracking hot, then dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil. The shattered, heat-spent stones were discarded to the sides, and over centuries of repeated use they built up into exactly the kind of curved mound visible here, its opening facing north towards the water source that would once have fed the trough.

This particular example is substantial: eighteen metres east to west, just under nine metres north to south, and rising to one and a half metres at its highest. The four-metre-wide gap in the mound's northern face marks where the trough would have been positioned. Several trees have since taken root on top of the accumulated burnt material, softening its outline considerably. It does not stand alone. A second fulacht fia lies roughly two hundred metres to the southwest, and as early as 1934 a researcher named Bowman recorded what may have been as many as seven such sites within this one townland, making Curraheen something of a concentration point for this type of monument. Fulachta fiadh are among the most common prehistoric features in the Irish landscape, particularly in Cork and Kerry, and are generally associated with the Bronze Age, though their precise function has been debated; cooking is the most widely accepted explanation, though brewing, textile processing, and bathing have all been proposed.