Whether it was left there by human hands or by the sea itself remains, formally speaking, an open question. That unresolved status is part of what makes it interesting: a feature that cannot quite be classified, sitting at the boundary between the natural and the archaeological.

A midden, in the archaeological sense, is a refuse heap, typically composed of the discarded shells of shellfish eaten by coastal communities over generations. Such deposits can be thousands of years old, and they are among the most informative traces early inhabitants left behind, preserving evidence of diet, season, and settlement. The shell mound at An Droim Thoir on the Dingle Peninsula fits that description in outline, but has not been confirmed as one. It was catalogued by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, which noted only that it has not been determined whether this is a natural collection of shells or a site of archaeological significance. Decades on, that determination appears still to be pending.