What the ground revealed here was not a single monument but a layered record of how people on this stretch of Kerry coastline built, rebuilt, and reorganised their domestic spaces over time.

The earliest phase of occupation at the site was a wooden structure, its form preserved in the pattern of driven stakes pushed into the ground, a technique that left voids or impressions legible centuries later to excavators. Over or near that earlier building, a circular structure was raised in stone, a form typical of early medieval Irish settlement, where roundhouses of dry-stone or mortared construction served as the principal domestic unit for farming communities between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. Later still, a souterrain was added to the site. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, often associated with early medieval settlements in Ireland, and thought to have served variously for storage, refuge, or both. The excavation established clearly that this underground feature was a later addition, constructed after the stone house was already standing, which tells us something about how the settlement evolved rather than appearing fully formed.

The site is recorded in A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan's archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996, which remains a foundational reference for early medieval remains across this part of south Kerry.