What makes a small discovery within it quietly remarkable is that the hillfort itself came second. Before the great ramparts were ever raised, somebody was already living here, and the physical evidence of that earlier presence survives as a circle of holes in the ground.

Excavated in 1995 as part of the Discovery Programme's North Munster Project, this hut site was found inside the middle rampart in the south-eastern quadrant of the hillfort. The excavation revealed forty-one post and stake-holes arranged in a circle roughly four metres in diameter. Post-holes are the voids left in soil after wooden upright timbers decay or are removed, and in combination with smaller stake-holes they allow archaeologists to reconstruct the plan of a structure that otherwise left no trace above ground. At Mooghaun, one central post-hole and a cluster of four others with diameters between 0.14 and 0.16 metres suggest a building with sturdy internal roof supports, implying something rather more substantial than a temporary shelter. Critically, the hut predates the construction of the rampart, placing it in the first phase of human activity on this hilltop, before the landscape was reorganised into the defended enclosure visible today. The findings were published by Eoin Grogan in 2005.