That is the quiet problem at the heart of this site: the very act of defending a place can destroy the evidence that it was defended before.

The headland at Ard Na Caithne, known as Dunore, almost certainly served as a promontory fort long before the sixteenth century. A promontory fort is exactly what it sounds like, a naturally defensive spur of land whose seaward sides need little help from human hands, with a bank or ditch cut across the landward neck to complete the enclosure. The antiquarian T. J. Westropp, surveying the Irish coastline in the early twentieth century, observed that virtually every suitable headland he had examined across counties Mayo, Clare, Waterford, Wexford, Dublin, and much of Cork had proven to be fortified in this way. Writing in 1910, he concluded that the "very suitable little headland in Smerwick" was unlikely to have been an exception. The difficulty is that the fortifications constructed here in 1579 to 1580, almost certainly in connection with the ill-fated Spanish and Italian landing at Smerwick during the Desmond Rebellions, have probably obliterated or buried whatever prehistoric or early medieval earthworks preceded them. One period of occupation has consumed the memory of another, leaving only inference where archaeology might once have provided something more solid.