The one at Knockatemple in County Mayo is a quiet example of a type that was once busy with activity. A fulacht fia, broadly speaking, is a prehistoric cooking site, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and shattered stone beside a trough, often cut into boggy ground near a water source. The standard interpretation is that water in the trough was heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it, allowing large quantities of meat to be boiled. The mounds of discarded, heat-shattered stone that remain are what archaeologists find today, sometimes still stained dark from ancient fires.

Most fulachta fia in Ireland date to the Bronze Age, roughly 1500 to 500 BC, though some have produced earlier and later dates. The name itself, sometimes translated loosely as "cooking place of the Fianna" after the mythological warrior band, is a medieval Irish term applied retrospectively to sites whose original name is long lost. They are so numerous across the landscape that it is easy to walk past one without noticing it, the low crescent of dark, peaty earth blending into the surrounding bog or field margin. The example at Knockatemple sits within a part of Mayo that retains a significant density of prehistoric remains, a reflection of how heavily this landscape was used long before recorded history began.