It is a midden, the accumulated refuse of past human habitation, typically a dense deposit of shellfish remains, animal bones, charcoal, pottery, and other domestic debris that builds up over generations of coastal or semi-coastal living. Middens are among the most informative archaeological features a site can contain, offering a direct record of what people ate, how they lived, and across what span of time they occupied a place. This one, however, occupies a peculiar administrative limbo: legally recognised, formally protected, and yet locationally uncertain.

On 28 February 1992, this midden was entered onto the Register of Historic Monuments as one of a group of seven, published in the Iris Oifigiúil, the official Irish state gazette, under Schedule 1/92. The registration confers legal protection under the National Monuments Acts, meaning that any interference with the site requires consent. The difficulty is that when authorities attempted to fix the midden's precise position using the map attached to the registration order, the boundary shown was too imprecise to identify exactly where the monument sits on the ground. As a result, it has been assigned a temporary location at the centre of the relevant area, a placeholder coordinate that acknowledges the site's existence while admitting that its true position remains unresolved. It is, in a quietly odd way, a protected place that cannot be pointed to with any confidence.