Two to three structures survive in the record, possibly three conjoined buildings, and the remains are quiet ones: rings of postholes marking circular walls, a central post, oven-like features, and in at least one structure, a hearth with associated stakeholes and a possible door threshold. No pottery came out of the ground, no tools, no objects of any kind that might anchor the site more firmly in time. The buildings themselves are the only real evidence.

The structures are thought to date to prehistory, with a Neolithic attribution considered probable. Each would have been roughly six to eight metres in diameter, a size consistent with the kind of timber roundhouse that communities in Ireland were constructing several thousand years ago, framing their walls with upright posts set into the earth and organising domestic life around a central hearth. What makes the Derrybane site particularly interesting is the suggestion that the buildings may not have stood entirely apart from one another, but were conjoined in some way, implying either a planned compound or a settlement that grew incrementally. Excavators also encountered pale, leeched patches in the subsoil that initially invited archaeological attention, but investigation concluded these were natural staining caused by upwelling water, a phenomenon dating to the immediately post-glacial period rather than to any human activity.