On a boggy ridge in Coornacaragh, on a level stretch of ground that runs south-east towards the hill of Knocknagorraveela, there was once a cairn, a mound of heaped stones typically raised over a prehistoric burial or used to mark a boundary, and now there is not even that. No stones, no outline, no trace visible at ground level. What survives is the record of the thing, not the thing itself.

The cairn was documented by B. Ó Cíobháin, who noted its position at the junction of four townlands, a location that in itself carries a certain quiet significance. Boundaries between townlands, the small territorial divisions that form the basic unit of the Irish rural landscape, were not chosen carelessly. A cairn placed at such a junction would have served as a legible landmark, readable by anyone who knew the land. Associated with the site is a possible burial dating to the 1790s, which complicates any straightforward reading of the cairn as purely prehistoric. Whether that burial made use of an already ancient monument, or whether the two features are connected in some other way, is not clear from what remains known about the site.