That ambiguity is, in its own way, the point. Ireland's peatlands have yielded an extraordinary range of preserved material over the centuries, from ancient trackways to Bronze Age butter, and the bogs of the midlands in particular have long attracted the attention of archaeologists working in wetland environments. Cloontamore sits within that tradition of cautious looking, without quite delivering a discovery.

During a field survey in 1988, worked wood was noted at the site, a detail passed on by B. Raftery, one of Ireland's foremost authorities on prehistoric archaeology and wetland sites. Worked wood in a bog context can be significant: timbers shaped or split by human hands may be the remnants of a togher (a wooden trackway laid across boggy ground), a platform, or some form of rudimentary structure. The preservation conditions in waterlogged peat are remarkable, capable of keeping organic material intact for thousands of years. But the evidence from Cloontamore was judged insufficient to confirm the presence of an archaeological monument. What was found was suggestive without being conclusive, a fragment of possible human activity that stops just short of meaning anything definitive.