A fulacht fia is, at its most basic, the waste heap left behind by a Bronze Age cooking or heating site. The typical arrangement involves a trough, usually timber-lined or stone-built, filled with water, which was then heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it. Those stones, once spent, were piled to the side, building up over time into the horseshoe-shaped or oval mounds archaeologists recognise today. At Scarteen, the burnt material measures roughly sixteen metres east to west and twenty metres north to south, rising to a height of around 1.2 metres, which speaks to repeated use over a considerable period. What makes the site particularly curious is that this mound material has been incorporated into the bank of a levelled circular enclosure, a separate feature recorded nearby. Whether the enclosure was built around or over the fulacht fia, or whether the burnt material was deliberately used as convenient fill when the bank was constructed, is not recorded, but the overlap of two distinct monument types in one location gives the site a quietly layered quality. Both features have been partially levelled, and the whole complex now sits unassumingly in farmland.