Field boundaries of this kind, when they earn a place in an archaeological inventory rather than a modern farming record, are usually something more than a fence line or a drystone wall thrown up last century. They can mark the edges of ancient land divisions, enclosures associated with early settlement, or boundaries that have been maintained and rebuilt across generations without anyone thinking to write it down.

The site appears in O'Sullivan and Sheehan's 1996 archaeological inventory of south-west Kerry, a systematic survey that catalogued the physical remains of human activity across one of Ireland's most monument-rich regions. That volume, later republished in 2009, treated field boundaries as legitimate subjects of archaeological attention, recognising that the organisation of land is itself a form of evidence, often as telling as a ringfort or a standing stone. Derrycarna, as a townland name, carries the Irish element doire, meaning an oak wood or grove, suggesting a landscape that would once have looked quite different from any open pasture visible today.