On the 1933 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, a hachured marking at Carheendoo in County Galway suggested, to anyone reading the sheet carefully, that something worth recording sat in that particular patch of land. Hachures, the small radiating lines cartographers used to indicate slopes or depressions, have a way of lending topographic features a quiet importance, the suggestion of a contour worth noting.

When the site was inspected in 1983, the feature resolved itself into a disused gravel pit, post-1700 in date and therefore outside the scope of archaeological classification. That dating threshold matters because it marks the boundary below which a feature becomes, in formal terms, archaeology, and above which it is simply industrial or agricultural history of the more recent kind. The gravel pit at Carheendoo falls on the modern side of that line, which means it was dug during a period when local demand for road-making or construction materials was met by opening small quarries like this one across the Irish countryside, worked briefly and then left once the immediate need passed or the material ran out.