A clochan is built without mortar, its corbelled walls tapering inward course by course until they meet at the top, a technique that can produce a surprisingly watertight interior from nothing but carefully chosen stone. What survives here is not the structures themselves but their foundations, the circular or ovoid footprints that once anchored walls rising several feet above the Atlantic-facing hillside.

The site was catalogued as part of the Corca Dhuibhne Archaeological Survey of the Dingle Peninsula, published in 1986, which systematically recorded the remarkable concentration of early medieval and prehistoric remains along this stretch of the Kerry coast. The two foundations at Fán appear under the Curran reference number 16, placing them within a broader cluster of similar remains in the area. Clochan settlements of this kind are generally associated with the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to twelfth centuries, when monastic communities and individual hermits established themselves in remote coastal locations, often choosing sites that seem almost deliberately inhospitable to modern eyes.