At just 2.8 metres in overall diameter, it is one of the more modest archaeological features you might encounter in Kerry, yet it may represent the collapsed remains of a dwelling, a hut once occupied within the sheltered enclosure of the stone fort that surrounds it.

A caher is a type of stone ringfort, a circular or roughly circular enclosure defined by dry-stone walling, common across the west of Ireland and associated broadly with early medieval settlement. The mound at Derrineden sits within such a structure, and its position in the interior is consistent with how domestic or agricultural huts were sometimes arranged inside these enclosures. The feature was recorded by archaeologists Aidan O'Sullivan and Jerry Sheehan as part of their comprehensive survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996.