These structures, constructed by roofing over a trench or by tunnelling into soft ground, are found in considerable numbers across Ireland, and their precise purposes have long been debated. Likely uses include cold storage, refuge during raids, or some combination of both. The one at Killeentierna is recorded as a monument, its existence noted and catalogued, though the details of its dimensions, condition, and exact situation within the landscape remain sparse in the available record.

Killeentierna parish takes its name from the early Irish saint Tighearna, and the area carries the usual layering of early Christian and prehistoric activity common to much of Kerry. Souterrains in this region are often associated with ringforts, the enclosed farmsteads that were the dominant settlement form of early medieval Ireland, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Whether the Killeentierna souterrain sits within or beside such an enclosure is not currently documented in a way that sheds much light on its original context. It remains, for now, a placeholder in the archaeological landscape, a known unknown.