To most eyes it would read as nothing more than a slight irregularity in the pasture. But this modest rise is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in the hundreds across Ireland, and particularly dense in Munster. The form is ancient and surprisingly consistent: a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone surrounding a trough, usually timber-lined, that would have been filled with water and heated by dropping in stones from a fire. The burnt and shattered stones, discarded after use, are what survive as the mound.

The site sits in grazing land with marshy ground immediately to the north, which is entirely typical of the type. Fulachtaí fia are almost always found close to water or wet ground, a practical necessity given that the whole process depended on a reliable water source. Most examples in Ireland date to the Bronze Age, broadly speaking the second millennium BC, though some have produced earlier or later dates. The one at Pluckanes leaves barely any impression on the landscape now, described as barely perceptible, which is a reminder of how much of prehistoric Ireland survives only at the margins of visibility, slowly flattening under centuries of grazing and weather.