Somewhere beneath the grass of a gently elevated pasture at Derryronan lies what local accounts describe as a possible burial or cist, along with traces of what may have been houses and hearths. A cist is a small stone-lined pit used to inter human remains, typically associated with prehistoric burial practice, and the combination of a possible cist with domestic traces nearby hints at a landscape that was once, in some small way, lived in and mourned over.