Two hachured symbols, the small radiating lines that cartographers used to suggest sunken or raised ground, appeared on either side of the townland boundary in Garrafine on the 1932 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map. They looked significant enough to warrant attention, but when the site was physically inspected in 1983, the features resolved into something altogether more mundane: a pair of disused gravel pits, sitting quietly in the undulating pastureland of east Galway.

The pits date to after 1700, which places them firmly in the era of improving landlords, road-building schemes, and the steady extraction of local materials for construction and drainage. Gravel was a practical necessity across rural Ireland during this period, dug out wherever it lay close to the surface and carted away for lane surfaces, building foundations, or field drainage. That the two pits straddle a townland boundary suggests they may have been worked independently by neighbouring communities, or that the boundary itself was drawn around pre-existing land use. Either way, the map symbols outlasted any memory of what the hollows actually were, preserving a small puzzle for later eyes to solve.