Archaeologists are not entirely sure what they are looking at. The spread measures roughly 16 metres north to south and 10.5 metres east to west, rising no more than half a metre from the ground, and the leading interpretation is that it may represent the collapsed remains of two or three clocháns joined together. A clochán is a dry-stone corbelled hut, typically beehive-shaped, built without mortar by stacking stones so that each course slightly overhangs the one below until the structure closes at the top. They are associated with early medieval monastic and farming life in the west of Ireland, and the Dingle Peninsula has an unusually dense concentration of them.

The uncertainty surrounding this particular site is part of what makes it worth attention. J. Cuppage, whose 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region documented the site, recorded it carefully without forcing a conclusion. The spread could be the footprint of a small cluster of conjoined cells, the kind of arrangement seen at better-preserved sites nearby, or it could represent something else entirely. What remains is a quietly unresolved feature of a landscape that has been continuously shaped, used, and worn down over many centuries, leaving this slope above Dunquin with something that resists easy classification.