That combination, an officially recognised site with almost nothing yet written about it, is itself a small curiosity. Inishkea North is one of a pair of low-lying islands that sit a few kilometres off the Mullet Peninsula, and it has a longer story of human occupation than its present uninhabited state might suggest.

The Inishkea islands were home to a settled community well into the twentieth century, with the permanent population finally leaving in the wake of a tragedy in October 1927, when ten young men from the islands drowned during a sudden storm while out fishing. Before that, the islands had been occupied in various forms for centuries, and earlier still they were home to early Christian monastic activity, traces of which have been identified by archaeologists working in the area. A mound of the kind recorded here could belong to any number of phases of that long occupation, from prehistoric burial to the remains of later settlement activity. Without more detailed examination, it sits in that ambiguous category that Irish field archaeology knows well: present, noted, and waiting.