The structure is recorded, catalogued, and confirmed to exist through local information, yet its precise location remains unidentified. That gap between knowing something is there and being unable to say exactly where it is captures something peculiar about the archaeology of rural Ireland, where the land holds more than maps can account for.

A souterrain is an underground passage or chamber, typically built during the early medieval period in Ireland, often associated with nearby settlement sites and thought to have served variously as storage space, a refuge, or a place of concealment. They were usually constructed from large stone slabs and can run for several metres beneath the surface. The souterrain at Ceapaigh Na Gcrann was noted as part of a wider site on the Iveragh Peninsula, that long arm of land reaching into the Atlantic that forms the southern shore of Dingle Bay. It was recorded in an archaeological survey of south Kerry compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, a work that remains one of the more thorough inventories of that region's pre-modern past. The entry notes the souterrain's existence on the basis of local knowledge, but stops short of pinning it to any fixed point on the ground.