The inner platform was cut and built up on the downslope side, a technique known as scarping, so that the roughly 27.5-metre interior would be workable despite the gradient. That effort, and the long sight-line it affords across the valley mouth to Tralee Bay and the Magharees Peninsula, suggests this was not an accidental location.

The earthwork is a univallate rath, meaning a ringfort enclosed by a single bank and outer ditch, the most common form of early medieval settlement in Ireland. These sites were typically the farmsteads of free farmers and minor lords between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. At Curracullenagh the bank and fosse survive unevenly. Along the eastern half, from south around to north-east, the bank remains reasonably intact, reaching close to two metres in height on the interior face and nearly three and a half metres wide at its base. A short stretch of drystone masonry still clings to the inner face on the east-north-east side. Elsewhere the picture is more complicated. The interior is covered in cultivation ridges, and in the north-north-east and north-north-west sectors these have badly disturbed the bank. To the west, it has been levelled entirely, though the two-metre drop from interior to exterior ground still traces the enclosure's outline. A low, narrow section in the south-south-west, faced on both sides with rough drystone walling, looks noticeably different from the rest and is probably a relatively modern repair, though it may follow the original line. The ditch, or fosse, exists only around the eastern half, running between roughly 2.75 and 3 metres wide and up to 1.2 metres deep. No entrance has been clearly identified; two narrow gaps on the north-east could simply be animal tracks worn over time. A separate low bank curving around the south-west at a distance of about four metres from the main enclosure appears to be the remnant of an old field boundary rather than any original feature. The site was recorded and described by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne area.