They are graveslabs, most likely, but beyond that basic function, very little is certain. No date has been established for them, no patron names attached, and no carving survives to suggest which century they belong to. They sit there quietly beneath whatever light filters into the ruin, a set of questions embedded in stone.

Ardfert, a small village in north Kerry, was one of the most significant ecclesiastical centres in early and medieval Ireland, closely associated with St Brendan the Navigator, who is said to have founded a monastery there in the sixth century. The Franciscan friary, where these slabs are found, came later; the Franciscans, a mendicant order that arrived in Ireland during the thirteenth century, established communities in towns and villages across the country, often serving as burial sites for local families of standing. That nine slabs of this kind survive together in the church floor at Ardfert is not entirely unusual for a friary church, where floor burial was common, but their collective anonymity is striking. The Urban Archaeology Survey of County Kerry, compiled by Bradley, Halpin and King, records them simply as slabs of undetermined date, which is an honest summary of how much, and how little, is known.