These structures are found across Ireland in their hundreds, typically associated with ringforts or early settlement sites, and their precise purpose has long been debated. Shelter, storage, refuge, or some combination of all three are the most plausible explanations. The fact that one exists here, recorded and classified, yet still waiting to give up its specifics, is itself a particular kind of quiet puzzle.

Booleenshare, like many Kerry townlands, carries a name that hints at older patterns of land use. The word "booley" derives from the Irish buaile, referring to a seasonal grazing ground, a place where cattle were brought in summer months. Whether the souterrain has any connection to that tradition of transhumance, or predates it entirely, is not currently known from available sources. Kerry is unusually rich in early medieval archaeology, and souterrains in the county are often found in association with the remains of ringforts, the circular enclosed farmsteads that dotted the Irish landscape from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Without further detail about what lies above ground at Booleenshare, the souterrain sits for now as a name on a map and a darkness underground, documented but not yet fully described.