That midden is no longer visible. It has been swallowed by the foreshore, obscured by sediment or erosion or simply the slow indifference of the tidal zone, and what survives of it now exists only as a note in the record.

Shell middens are among the most intimate traces a community can leave. They are, essentially, ancient kitchen waste, the compacted remnants of meals, and they can preserve a remarkable range of organic material including animal bone, charcoal, and occasionally tools or ornaments. The deposit at Ballycarbery was by all accounts substantial, and it was still present and exposed in the 1940s, when local knowledge of it was recorded. How much earlier it had been noticed, or how long it had been accumulating in the first place, is not documented. Valentia Harbour, sheltered and rich in marine life, would have made an obvious base for coastal communities throughout prehistory and into the early medieval period, but without excavation any suggestion about who left this particular midden and when remains speculative.