Vegetation marks of this kind appear when buried structures alter the moisture retention or nutrient composition of the soil above them, causing the plants growing there to differ subtly from their surroundings. From the air, those differences read as shapes, and these particular shapes are roughly circular.

The primitive mines nearby are themselves a reminder that Kerry's landscape carries a long history of small-scale extraction, the kind of working that left little in the way of formal record. The circular marks are thought to indicate the remains of a settlement associated with that mining activity, a cluster of dwellings where the people who worked the mines may have lived. Circular structures in Irish archaeology most commonly point to the remains of roundhouses, though without excavation the interpretation remains provisional. What the aerial evidence suggests, at minimum, is that the mining operation was sustained enough to require people to live close to it, embedded in the bog rather than travelling to it.