The one at Kerries, near Tralee, survived for a more particular reason: it was built on rock. While the surrounding lowland was progressively reclaimed and its field boundaries cleared away, two low reefs of stone outcrop kept this prehistoric landscape just above the level of agricultural erasure. The system stretches roughly 700 metres north to south and 400 metres east to west, a considerable extent, yet for the most part it announces itself quietly, as low-lying stony remains rather than dramatic walls or earthworks.

The site is structured around two main reef formations. The larger runs north to south for about 400 metres and spreads 160 metres east to west; the smaller, positioned to the west, is 270 metres long and 100 metres wide. On the reclaimed ground between and around these outcrops, the older field boundaries have not survived as physical features at all; they show up only as crop marks, the kind of ghostly impressions that appear in aerial photographs when buried soil disturbance affects how plants grow above them. That contrast, between the standing remains on the rock and the vanished traces in the softer ground beside them, gives some sense of how much has been lost across the broader landscape. The details come from research by Michael Connolly, whose doctoral thesis on the prehistoric settlement of the Lee Valley examined this area as part of a wider landscape study for University College Cork in 2008.