Someone shaped them, at some point, for some purpose. Beyond that, almost nothing is certain, and that uncertainty is precisely what makes this spot worth a moment's thought.

During a field survey carried out in 1988, archaeologist B. Raftery noted the presence of worked wood within the peatland. Peatlands preserve organic material extraordinarily well, their acidic, oxygen-poor conditions slowing decay to near nothing, which is why ancient timbers, and occasionally entire wooden structures, trackways, and even human remains, survive in Irish bogs long after they would have vanished from drier ground. The wood at Cloontamore was enough to prompt a record, but not enough to confirm what it once was. The evidence was judged insufficient to classify the site as the remains of an archaeological monument. It exists in a kind of official limbo, noted but unresolved, a small question mark pressed into the peat.