That ambiguity is itself the point. During a field survey in 1988, researchers noted the presence of worked wood in the peat, the kind of detail that, in wetter, older ground across Ireland, has sometimes turned out to be the remnant of a trackway, a platform, or a structure of genuine antiquity. Peatlands preserve organic material with unusual fidelity, holding timber in a state of suspended decay for centuries or even millennia, which is why wetland archaeology in Ireland has occasionally produced extraordinary finds.

The discovery at Annaghbeg was recorded by the archaeologist B. Raftery, cited in a 1990 publication, and the worked wood was considered significant enough to log. But the evidence, on reflection, did not meet the threshold required to classify the site as an archaeological monument. That is not quite the same as saying nothing is there. It means that what was found could not be firmly distinguished from more recent or incidental disturbance, and that the fragmentary nature of the evidence left the question open rather than settled. The Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit, based at University College Dublin, was the body responsible for systematically surveying bogland sites of this kind across the country during that period, working through terrain that conventional field archaeology had largely passed over.