That combination, stone confirmed as funerary, set into the ground of a medieval friary church, yet resistant to any precise dating, gives them a quietly unresolved quality that more celebrated monuments rarely have.

The friary at Ardfert was a Franciscan foundation, part of a complex of ecclesiastical buildings that made the village one of the more significant religious sites in late medieval Kerry. These nine limestone slabs were recorded as a group, embedded in the floor of the friary church, each one a graveslab in the broad sense, a dressed stone marker laid over or near a burial, though the standard carving, inscription, or figural detail that would allow historians to assign a century or a name appears to be absent here, or at least indeterminate. Limestone was the practical choice across much of Munster for this kind of monument, durable enough for ecclesiastical use and workable by local craftsmen. The fact that all nine remain in situ, rather than propped against a wall or removed to a heritage store, means they are still functioning in something close to their original context, even if that context can no longer be fully read.