Crop marks, the subtle differences in vegetation colour and growth caused by buried features affecting soil moisture and nutrients, revealed a possible field system on satellite imagery captured between 2011 and 2013. Alongside the field system, the imagery picked out two circular enclosures, the kind of roughly ring-shaped earthworks associated with settlement and land use across many periods of Irish prehistory and early history.

The full complexity of what lies beneath the surface only became apparent through geophysical survey carried out by the Discovery Programme as part of its LIARI Project. Rather than a simple, single-phase layout, the survey identified a dense mosaic of rectilinear, circular, and petal-shaped enclosures spread across more than one hectare. Researcher G. Dowling, writing in 2013, described the features as appearing to be defined by a series of adjoining and overlapping ditches and trenches, a pattern suggesting multiple phases of land division and possible settlement over time. The magnetic responses recorded during the survey varied considerably across the site, and some particularly strong anomalies are thought to indicate ditches that once held significant quantities of burnt material as well as decaying organic matter, the kind of evidence that can point to deliberate burning of vegetation, refuse disposal, or even industrial activity at some point in the site's long use.

There is nothing to see at ground level, which is part of what makes Blackland interesting as a category of place. The site exists primarily in datasets, satellite images, and geophysical records rather than in any visible earthwork or monument. For those interested in how archaeology is actually done in the modern era, the Blackland field system is a useful illustration of the LIARI Project's broader method, using remote sensing and geophysics to map buried landscapes across Ireland without a single spadeful of soil being turned. The SMR, Ireland's Sites and Monuments Record, holds the formal entries for the features identified here, and the Discovery Programme's published survey reports remain the most detailed source for anyone wanting to understand what the data actually shows.