It is what archaeologists call a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in extraordinary numbers across Ireland. The typical form involves a trough, often timber-lined, that would have been filled with water and heated using stones thrown from a fire; those stones crack and blacken with repeated use, and it is their accumulated debris that forms the characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound still visible at thousands of sites. At Gowlane, the mound is low and unassuming, its shape softened by centuries of agricultural use.

This particular site is one of three fulachta fiadh that once stood close together in the same area. In 1986, all three were levelled, most likely during land improvement work associated with the reclamation of the surrounding pasture. The two neighbouring sites survive as separate records. What remains at this spot is essentially the flattened residue of that burnt and shattered stone, a shadow of the original mound pressed into the soil. The clustering of multiple fulachta fiadh in proximity is not unusual; such sites are frequently found in groups near water sources, and their concentration in a single field can suggest repeated or communal use of a particular landscape over long periods of prehistory.