They appear as low, horseshoe-shaped mounds, typically found near water, and are generally dated to the Bronze Age, somewhere between 1500 and 500 BC. The mound itself is the accumulated debris of repeated use, charred and cracked stones discarded after heating. The working theory, long accepted and recently challenged, is that these were cooking sites: stones were heated in a fire, dropped into a water-filled trough until the water boiled, and used to cook meat. Other proposals include brewing, hide-processing, or bathing. The one at Levallinree, in County Mayo, is a representative of this widespread but quietly puzzling class of monument.

Mayo has no shortage of them. The county's boggy, low-lying terrain preserves organic and archaeological material unusually well, and fulachtaí fia tend to survive best in exactly these wet, marginal conditions, where the land was never ploughed or heavily developed. The name itself is old Irish, loosely rendered as "cooking place of the deer" or "cooking place of the Fianna," though neither translation fully settles the question of what these sites were actually for. Without more detailed excavation records for the Levallinree site specifically, it is difficult to say more about its particular history, dimensions, or condition, and speculation would not serve it well.