These places, known in Irish as cilliní (singular cillín), were used for centuries to inter unbaptised infants and others considered ineligible for burial in consecrated ground, including stillborn children, foundlings, and occasionally suicides or strangers. They occupy a particular and melancholy position in Irish social and religious history, existing just outside the formal structures of the Church while remaining deeply embedded in local community life and memory.

The practice of using such marginal ground, often ancient or liminal in character, such as old ringfort interiors, coastal edges, or unconsecrated hillside plots, persisted from the medieval period through to the mid-twentieth century in some parts of Ireland. Kerry, with its dense concentration of early medieval and prehistoric remains, has a notable number of these sites. The Derreenauliff ground is recorded as part of the archaeological inventory of south-west Kerry, catalogued by O'Sullivan and Sheehan in their 1996 volume covering the region, which brought systematic attention to a class of monument that had long been overlooked by mainstream archaeological practice.

Cilliní are often easy to miss. They may appear as a slightly raised or enclosed patch of rough ground, sometimes bounded by a low stone wall or an irregular cluster of small, unmarked stones. The absence of inscribed markers is characteristic; the burials were quiet by necessity, carried out at night in some traditions, and the grief associated with them was largely private. Recognising one in the field requires a certain attentiveness to the texture of the landscape rather than any obvious monument.