Look a little closer, though, and two of the six structures reveal something older beneath their practical surfaces. Two circular enclosures, measuring three and 3.6 metres in diameter and standing to a height of 1.75 metres, are thought to have begun their lives as hut-sites, the kind of modest dry-stone shelters that pepper the uplands of the Dingle Peninsula. At some point they were repurposed as sheep-folds, and four smaller pens were added or associated with them, folding the earlier structures into a working agricultural complex.

The Dingle Peninsula is one of the most archaeologically dense landscapes in Ireland, and the 1986 survey by J. Cuppage, published under the title Corca Dhuibhne, brought systematic attention to hundreds of sites across the area, including this one. The reuse of earlier structures as animal enclosures is a recurring pattern across upland Ireland; the circular form that made a good shelter for a person also made a serviceable pen for sheep, and generations of farmers recognised that ready-cut stone was easier to adapt than to quarry anew. The result is a layering of functions in a single structure, where the original purpose, whether seasonal habitation, a shepherd's temporary camp, or something older still, becomes difficult to separate cleanly from what came after.