Pot boilers

The forest has many stories to tell if you deviate from the main tracks and paths, looking carefully as you wander. Amongst the buttresses of this old Beech, a pile of blackened pebbles, burnt in a fire. Too small, I think, for the stones you might place around a fire and all a similar size. What they look like to me are stones which may have been used as pot boilers.  Pot boiling is heating stones in or near the fire and then adding them to a ceramic or hide container of water as a method to cook food.  Archaeologists suggest that this practice was common in prehistoric times, with heaps of pot boilers found on some sites. These stones though, I don't think are that old. So, if they were used in this way, who by? And in what circumstances?  The closest source for the stones is about 300m away, in the banks of a small stream; that and the way they're heaped I'm confident they had purpose and human agency was in action and them not being merely exposed natural subjected to heath fire. An interesting find, posing several questions to ponder.