A fulacht fia, the term for a prehistoric burnt mound typically associated with Bronze Age cooking or industrial activity, was marked at a specific location on successive official maps, yet when someone actually went to look, nothing was there.

The story begins with a communication from John Maher in 1986, which led to the site being plotted on the Sites and Monuments Record map in 1987 and again on the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996. When a field inspection was carried out in 1989, however, the recorded location yielded nothing. What the inspector found instead were the levelled remains of a fulacht fia and a separate burnt spread, the scorched debris of prehistoric fire and water activity, sitting roughly 130 metres and 140 metres to the north-northeast of the mapped point. The conclusion drawn is a careful one: it is possible that the original plotted location was simply incorrect.

As archaeological puzzles go, this one is modest but telling. Fulachtaí fia are among the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, often appearing as low, horseshoe-shaped mounds of heat-shattered stone beside a water source, and their very familiarity can make precise recording feel like a formality. The Killamery case is a reminder that a point on a map is only as reliable as the information behind it, and that the gap between where something is said to be and where it actually turns out to be can stretch, in this instance, to the length of a football pitch and a half.