That modest patch of tumbled stone may be all that remains of a rectangular hut, a structure whose occupants left almost nothing behind beyond the rough geometry of its walls.

The enclosure is a caher, the Irish term for a stone ringfort, a circular or roughly circular enclosure defined by a dry-stone wall and typically associated with early medieval settlement, though some examples are considerably older. Within the caher at An Fearann Iarthach, most of the interior is strewn with loose stone, but the eastern portion holds a denser concentration measuring approximately 3.7 metres by 3.5 metres. According to the archaeological survey of South Kerry compiled by Aidan O'Sullivan and Jerry Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, this concentration may represent the foundations of a rectangular hut. The qualification matters: stone scatters inside cahers can be difficult to read, and what looks like a building's footprint does not always resolve into certainty without excavation.

The rectangular form is itself worth pausing on. Early medieval Irish settlement sites more commonly yield circular hut foundations, so a rectangular outline, if that is indeed what this is, sits slightly outside the norm. Whether it reflects a different period of use, a distinct function within the enclosure, or simply the pragmatic choices of whoever built it, the rubble does not say.