The site would once have formed a recognisable horseshoe-shaped mound, the classic signature of this type of prehistoric cooking place, but local information confirms it was levelled relatively recently, leaving only the dark, fire-cracked scatter in the ground to indicate what stood there.

Fulachtaí fia are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, found in their thousands across the island, almost always near water. The name is sometimes translated loosely as "deer roast" or "cooking place of the wild", though their exact function has been debated; the most widely accepted interpretation is that they were used for boiling water, achieved by heating stones in a fire and dropping them into a water-filled trough. The stones crack and shatter with the thermal shock, and it is this accumulation of shattered, fire-reddened stone that forms the characteristic mound. At Gortacurrig, that mound is gone, but the burnt spread it left behind still preserves the footprint of what was likely a Bronze Age site. The proximity to a stream is entirely typical; the water source was not incidental but central to how the site functioned.