Someone in the area simply knew it was there. That kind of discovery, passed along informally, is not uncommon in rural Kerry, where the land holds more than the maps tend to show.

The site was once part of a univallate enclosure, meaning a roughly circular enclosed area defined by a single bank or wall, the sort of feature that commonly surrounded a ringfort or early farmstead. That enclosure was marked on Ordnance Survey maps, but by the time researchers were writing it up, it had already been levelled, erased by agricultural work or land clearance. What remained, at least in the record compiled by J. Cuppage for the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of 1986, was the souterrain itself and a possible entrance on the eastern side. Souterrains were used for a variety of purposes, most likely food storage and refuge, and they tend to survive precisely because they are underground and easy to overlook, even when everything above them has been disturbed or destroyed.

The source material here is sparse, and the site itself is inconspicuous by nature. What is quietly striking about Gortacurraun is the contrast between the thoroughness with which the enclosure was removed and the accidental survival of the passage beneath it, known to locals long before it appeared in any formal record.