Ring-barrows are prehistoric burial monuments, typically consisting of a low central mound enclosed by a circular earthen bank and an outer ditch, and they are often found clustered together, as though the communities who built them were deliberately gathering their dead in the same corner of the world. This one at Duncummin is modest even by the standards of the form: a roughly circular raised area just 4.8 metres in diameter, ringed by an earthen scarp no more than 0.2 metres high and a shallow external fosse, or ditch, measuring around 15 centimetres deep.

What makes the spot quietly compelling is not the monument on its own but its company. A ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was commonplace in early medieval Ireland, sits only 16 metres to the north-east, and a second ring-barrow lies just 8 metres further out to the east-north-east, with others recorded nearby. The landscape here appears to have accumulated significance across long stretches of time, with prehistoric burial activity and early medieval settlement occupying the same damp ground in close proximity. The southern arc of the fosse has been worn away by livestock grazing, which gives some indication of how continuously this land has been worked, and how little ceremony the centuries have offered these small earthworks. The interior of the mound itself remains level and clear of overgrowth, which at least allows the original form to be read without too much difficulty.