A ring barrow is a circular earthen burial mound enclosed by a ditch and outer bank, a form associated with Bronze Age funerary practice, and up to nine of these features appear as crop marks on an aerial photograph taken in May 1986. On the ground today, there is nothing to see at all.

The ambiguity surrounding the site is part of what makes it interesting. When the features were examined, the question arose as to whether they might simply be the circular impressions left by cattle feeding rings, a mundane agricultural explanation that would account for their roughly circular shapes. What argued against this reading was the variation in dimensions across the nine examples; a set of utilitarian farm fittings would tend towards uniformity, while genuine prehistoric monuments often differ from one another in size and construction. That variation, subtle as it sounds, tips the evidence towards the possibility of something genuinely ancient lying beneath this unremarkable field in Knockanpierce, quietly persisting beneath the soil while the mart goes about its business nearby.