The one at Crohane, in County Tipperary, makes no such declaration. It was only identified at all through an aerial photograph taken in May 2003, when the cropmark of a roughly circular form appeared in the pasture, the kind of ghostly outline that dry summers or particular angles of light occasionally coax from fields that have been improved and grazed for generations.

What the photograph revealed, and what careful ground inspection has since confirmed, is a near-circular area measuring approximately fourteen metres east to west and twelve metres north to south. A fosse, which is a ditch typically dug to define or defend an enclosed space, runs around it, though the word barely does justice to how faint this one has become: it survives to a width of around 4.2 metres but a depth of only five centimetres, less than the height of a thumb. A gentle rise along the south-south-east to west-south-west arc may represent the remnant of an outer bank, though even that is uncertain. The interior is level. Whether the enclosure was a settlement, a ceremonial space, or something with a purely agricultural purpose is not known, and the remains alone will not say. What is clear is that it sits on a south-facing slope with wide views across to Slievenamon, the distinctive mountain that dominates the southern Tipperary skyline, which may or may not have mattered to whoever chose this spot.