Others vanish more abruptly. On a steep south-facing slope in the uplands of Curraghmore, County Tipperary, there once appeared to be an enclosure, the kind of roughly circular or oval boundary, usually of earthen bank and ditch, that prehistoric and early medieval communities used to demarcate a dwelling, a farmstead, or a place of significance. Today, a modern quarry occupies the spot where that outline was recorded. Nothing is visible at ground level.

What we know of this site comes from a single aerial photograph, taken as part of a wider survey of the Irish landscape. Aerial photography has long been one of archaeology's most useful tools; from above, the shadows and soil-colour variations left by buried or levelled earthworks can betray features that are entirely invisible to someone standing on the ground. In this case, the photograph caught the outline of the possible enclosure before quarrying obliterated whatever physical trace remained. The site sits close to a ringfort to the north, a type of enclosed farmstead common across Ireland from roughly the early medieval period, suggesting this part of the Tipperary uplands was once a worked and settled landscape rather than marginal ground.