It does not look like much at first glance, which is part of what makes it interesting. This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically Bronze Age in origin. The mound itself is the accumulated waste of the process: stones that were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, cracking and blackening in the process until they were useless and were simply thrown aside. Over many uses, those discarded stones built up into the low, horseshoe-shaped or oval mounds that survive across the Irish landscape today.

What makes the Scarteen example quietly notable is that it does not sit in isolation. Around 140 metres to the northwest lies a second fulacht fia, the proximity suggesting that this particular stretch of land was returned to repeatedly, perhaps over generations, for whatever activity these sites supported. Cooking is the most widely accepted explanation, though some researchers have proposed brewing, hide-working, or bathing as alternative or additional functions. The location beside a reliable water source, the deep drain and its stream, is entirely typical; access to water was not incidental but essential to the whole process. The mound here measures roughly 0.9 metres in height, which indicates a considerable accumulation of burnt stone over time.