That is more or less what happened: the field system at Ballynacarriga was identified not by a ground survey or an archival discovery, but through aerial photography, the kind of overhead perspective that routinely reveals what centuries of agricultural activity and changing land use have obscured at eye level.

The site sits in gently undulating pasture interspersed with rock outcrop, roughly 0.9 kilometres to the south-south-west of the confluence of the River Shannon estuary and the River Maigue, two of the most significant waterways in Munster. The field system came to light when photographer Michael Moore captured the area from the air on 4 March 2006, and the linear banks and associated features were subsequently confirmed in a Google Earth orthoimage from February 2009 and in Digital Globe orthophotos taken between 2011 and 2013. Field systems of this kind, essentially the fossilised boundaries of former agricultural enclosures, are often best read from above, where the pattern of banks, ditches, and cleared ground becomes legible in a way that walking the same terrain rarely allows. The record was compiled by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly, and uploaded to the Archaeological Survey of Ireland in June 2020.

Because the site exists primarily as a cropmark and earthwork feature rather than as a standing monument, a visit requires some patience and reasonable expectations. The banks are visible on the ground as subtle rises through the rock outcrop and pasture, but the full geometry of the system only resolves properly from aerial imagery. The location is on private agricultural land, so access would depend on the landowner's permission. The wider area does offer an orientation point worth noting: the elevated ground gives a clear prospect towards the Shannon and Maigue confluence, and that relationship between a field system and a navigable waterway is the kind of detail that tends to prompt further questions about who farmed here, and when.