On the northern flank of the Knocknanacree ridge in County Kerry, a roughly oval patch of bare ground, measuring about 30 metres north to south and 45 metres east to west, is all that remains of a ringfort that once stood here in the undulating pastureland of Gurteen. Where there was once an enclosure, likely bounded by an earthen bank and ditch, there is now just a slight irregularity in the grass, the kind of thing that takes a moment to register before it starts to seem significant.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were the most common type of early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically consisting of a circular or near-circular enclosure defined by one or more banks and ditches. A univallate example like this one had a single such bank, enclosing a domestic space where a family and their livestock would have lived. The Gurteen site was recorded on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map as a univallate circular enclosure and was named simply 'Fort' on the Fair plan, the detailed working document surveyors produced before the finished map was engraved. By the time J. Cuppage documented it for the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey in 1986, the earthworks had already been reduced to that bare, irregular patch of ground, the soil chemistry or compaction left by the old bank apparently just enough to suppress the grass that covers everything around it.