But paired standing stones of this kind are a distinct and somewhat puzzling category of prehistoric monument, set apart from the more familiar solitary standing stone by the deliberate relationship between the two uprights and, in many cases, by an alignment that seems carefully chosen rather than incidental. At Gortlicka, that alignment runs northeast to southwest, and the pair sits on a level break in a west-facing slope with a clear outlook over the valley of the Dromoghty River below.

The two stones are close in height but not identical. The northeastern stone, the taller of the two, reaches 1.3 metres above ground and measures roughly 0.95 metres in length and 0.5 metres in thickness. Its southwestern companion is fractionally shorter at 1.27 metres and somewhat squarer in profile, at 0.68 metres long and 0.58 metres thick. The gap between them is 0.76 metres, giving the pair an overall span of 2.4 metres. Paired standing stones of this type are found across the southwest of Ireland, particularly in Counties Kerry and Cork, and while their precise function remains uncertain, the consistency of their northeast-southwest orientation across multiple sites has led many archaeologists to associate them with prehistoric calendrical or astronomical observation, possibly marking the rising or setting of the sun at particular points in the year. The careful choice of position here, on a shelf of ground that opens westward across a river valley, suggests the siting was anything but accidental.