Sometimes the most telling thing about a place is what is no longer there. At the northern end of Kilgowan townland in County Kildare, the name Raheens preserves the memory of one or more raths, the circular earthen enclosures that served as farmsteads and defensible homesteads throughout early medieval Ireland. The land has since been levelled and improved, and no physical trace of any monument survives above ground.

The name itself does the work of the archaeology. According to P.W. Joyce's study of Irish place names, 'Raheens' derives from the Irish for 'little rath or forts', a diminutive form suggesting modest enclosures rather than major strongholds. The site appears on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, published in 1839, which means that whatever earthworks once existed here were considered significant enough to be recorded by the surveyors, even if agricultural improvement had already begun to erode them. By the time anyone thought to look more closely, the ground had given nothing away.