It is a fulacht fia, one of the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland and yet one of the least immediately legible. The mound is composed of burnt and fire-cracked stone, the accumulated debris of repeated high-temperature heating, most likely over many centuries of the Bronze Age. The opening of the horseshoe, 2.2 metres wide, faces north-northeast, and the mound itself measures just under ten metres along its longer axis.

Fulachta fiadh, the plural form, are generally interpreted as outdoor cooking sites, though that consensus has been complicated in recent decades by experimental archaeology and competing theories involving brewing, bathing, or textile processing. The typical arrangement involved a trough, often timber-lined and sunk into the ground near a water source, into which stones heated in a nearby fire would be dropped to bring water to the boil. The cracked, spent stones were then raked aside, building up over time into the characteristic horseshoe mound around the trough. What makes the Glanycummane site particularly worth noting is that it does not stand alone. It is one of a cluster of five such monuments in the immediate area, suggesting sustained, repeated activity at this location rather than a single episode of use. The concentration of fulachta fiadh in one spot is a pattern seen elsewhere in Ireland and hints at the kind of communal or seasonal significance that archaeology can gesture towards without quite resolving.