Less celebrated, but sitting quietly within the same landscape, is a fulacht fia, a type of site so common across Ireland that they number in the thousands, yet still not fully understood. The prevailing interpretation is that these horseshoe-shaped mounds of burnt and shattered stone were the remains of ancient cooking places, where water held in a timber- or stone-lined trough was heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it. Some researchers have argued for other uses, including brewing, textile processing, or bathing, and the debate has never been entirely settled.

What makes the Mooghaun example worth noting is its proximity to the hillfort, one of the largest of its kind in the country and the findspot, in 1854, of the Great Clare Gold Hoard, a collection of Bronze Age gold objects of extraordinary size that was largely broken up and melted down shortly after its discovery. Fulachtaí fia are typically dated to the Bronze Age, and a site of this type in the shadow of such a substantial Bronze Age enclosure invites obvious questions about the people who used both. Whether the fulacht was connected to the hillfort community or represents an earlier or separate phase of activity in the area is the kind of question that would require excavation to answer with any confidence.