About two hundred metres north of the Awbeg River, in ground that was only ever partially reclaimed from flood-prone marsh, two low oval earthen mounds rise just sixty centimetres above the surrounding terrain, separated by a muddy cattle path. One is smothered in scrub and bushes; the other has kept its grass cover. Neither announces itself with any drama. Together they occupy a stretch of soggy Co. Cork countryside that has, at various points in its recorded history, simply gone under water.

The 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map records the site rather differently, showing a single hachured circular raised area of around ten metres in diameter, the hachuring indicating a discrete mound standing above its surroundings. By 1906, the same OS mapping was marking the area as liable to floods, which gives some sense of how marginal and contested this ground has always been. What is not clear from surviving evidence is what the original structure was built for, or when. The splitting of what appeared on the 1842 map as one circular form into two distinct oval mounds may reflect centuries of agricultural activity, livestock movement, or simple erosion in waterlogged soil. The cattle path between them is its own kind of archaeology, worn through repeated use across ground that floods regularly and drains poorly.