Known to archaeologists as a settlement platform, this kind of feature is exactly what the name suggests: a deliberately levelled or artificially raised surface on which people once built and lived, the physical memory of a community pressed into the earth long after any structure above it has gone.

Settlement platforms of this type are found across Ireland and tend to date from the early to late medieval period, though the form was used across a broad span of centuries. They are easy to overlook in the landscape, often appearing as little more than a slight irregularity in a field, a modest rise that catches low winter light differently from the ground around it. Culleenduff itself is a small rural townland in Sligo, a county whose landscape holds a remarkable density of archaeological remains, from megalithic tombs to ringforts, many of them unexcavated and without detailed written histories attached to them. This particular platform has not yet been the subject of any published investigation that would allow specific dates or associated finds to be attached to it.