On the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, the Ordnance Survey maps mark the position of a circular cashel, a type of dry-stone enclosure typical of early medieval Ireland, built to protect a homestead or small settlement. The structure is catalogued, given a reference number, assigned its coordinates. And yet, on the ground, there is nothing to see.

The cashel at Caher has been gone since at least 1832, when its stones were taken away, probably for reuse in field walls or buildings nearby. That act of clearance did, however, turn up something unexpected. According to J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, there was reputedly a souterrain within the enclosure, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber used in early medieval Ireland for storage or refuge, and when the stones were removed, large bones were found inside it. The bones are not further described, and no record seems to survive of what became of them. Whether they were human or animal, ancient or more recent, the account does not say. The detail simply sits there, unexplained, in a survey note.

What remains is a place defined entirely by what was recorded rather than what can be observed. The OS map reference persists. The field may look like any other on this part of the peninsula. The bones found in 1832 have left no visible mark on the landscape, only a line in a book.