When they were deposited, and by whom, remains unknown. The shells have been recorded as a shell midden, meaning a deliberate accumulation of food waste, the kind of deposit that archaeologists typically associate with human occupation or repeated seasonal use of a site. That such a midden sits at the threshold of an active cave, rather than on a coastal strand, is what makes the find quietly puzzling.

The cave appears on Tim Robinson's 1977 map under the Irish name Poll an Phuca, meaning the hole or cave of the pooka, the shape-shifting spirit of Irish folklore that was often associated with liminal, watery, or underground places. It also appears as Pollballyelly in Martin Dowd's catalogue of caves published in 2015. The cave itself runs to 178 metres in length and carries a substantial internal streamway, fed by the karst drainage characteristic of the Burren's underlying carboniferous limestone. When Robin Sheen examined the site in 2009, the limpet shells were noted near the entrance, though no dating has been established for them.