That uncertainty is precisely what makes the group worth knowing about. Nine boulders, each between half a metre and just under a metre across, occupy an area roughly three metres by two. They do not align, they do not radiate outward, and they do not obviously enclose anything. The official designation is blunt about the ambiguity: this may simply be a natural feature.

The confusion has a history. Ordnance Survey records from 1930 described seven flat stones arranged in a circle, and the researcher Power, writing in 1932, gave its diameter as fifteen feet and noted that the seven stones projected about two feet above the surface. Whether two additional boulders were subsequently identified, or whether earlier observers were selective in what they counted, is not recorded. Stone circles in Cork and Kerry are well-documented, typically consisting of odd numbers of uprights arranged around a recumbent stone, and they are associated broadly with Bronze Age ritual activity. Whether Curraghavoe ever belonged to that tradition, or whether the circular reading was wishful, is a question the site itself refuses to answer. Ó Nualláin, who catalogued prehistoric stone circles across the region in the 1980s, included the site in his survey, which at least kept it in the conversation.