That kind of careful negotiation between different phases of use is easy to overlook, yet it tells you something about how people organised and reused a landscape over generations.

A rath is a roughly circular enclosure, typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch, associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland. Within this one at Carhan, the first of the huts sits in the south-western quadrant. It is nearly circular in plan, measuring 4.25 metres by 3.9 metres internally, which gives a sense of just how modest a space it would have been. The low stone walls, now covered in sod, survive to no more than 0.3 metres in height internally, and a gap on the northern side marks where the entrance once stood. The description of the site draws on archaeological survey work carried out across the Iveragh Peninsula, compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996.