The two are not identical: one is noticeably smaller, with an internal diameter of roughly three metres, while the other stretches to around five and a half metres across. What makes the site quietly compelling is that it is not a single dwelling but a pair, suggesting at least some degree of organised habitation rather than a solitary, improvised shelter.

The walls of both huts are built in horizontal courses, a technique that places flat stones in level layers rather than in the irregular stacking sometimes seen in drystone construction. Although only the inner wall-faces are exposed, they survive to a height of around thirty centimetres, enough to trace the line of each structure. The walls themselves are substantial, ranging from sixty to ninety centimetres thick, which is characteristic of early Irish stone huts, sometimes called clocháns or clochans, where thick rubble-filled walls provided insulation and structural stability in exposed Atlantic conditions. The site is recorded in the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, one of the more thorough regional surveys carried out in Ireland during that period. Carhan, situated in south Kerry not far from Cahersiveen, sits in a landscape that has accumulated archaeological layers over millennia, from early medieval settlement to post-medieval farming.