The site, located about 300 metres southwest of a ringfort and just north of the N56 Donegal to Killybegs road, was earmarked for 49 new houses. The landscape here tells a familiar Irish story; boggy pasture to the north gradually gives way to better grazing land in the south, with a river flowing through Duncan’s Bridge marking the western boundary.

During preliminary inspections in 2006, two intriguing features caught the archaeologists’ attention: a recumbent stone in the southwestern corner and what appeared to be a fulacht fiadh near Rosslee House. Fulachta fiadh, those mysterious ancient cooking sites found scattered across Ireland, typically appear as horseshoe-shaped mounds of heat-shattered stone and charcoal. They’re thought to have been used for cooking, though some archaeologists suggest they might have served other purposes, from brewing to bathing.

The excavation trenches revealed fairly predictable stratigraphy for this part of Donegal; topsoil over boulder clay on the higher ground, whilst the lower areas showed mossy grass and rushes sitting atop marly clay and peat. Whilst the area around the recumbent stone yielded no archaeological finds, the suspected fulacht fiadh site proved more promising. Here, Moore’s team uncovered heat-fractured stones embedded in charcoal-rich soil, classic indicators of prehistoric cooking activity. These findings add another piece to our understanding of how people lived and worked in this corner of Donegal thousands of years ago.