The stones are not arranged in neat rows, and there are no grand monuments or inscribed slabs. What survives is an irregular area, roughly 23 metres from north to south, in which the graves are oriented east to west, as was the widespread Christian practice of burying the dead so that they would face the rising sun at resurrection. The low, mossy markers have been slowly consumed by vegetation, and it takes some attention to read the ground for what it is.

The site sits within a wider enclosure, a feature common enough in the Irish landscape, where ancient circular or sub-circular earthworks often hint at earlier religious or settlement activity beneath or beside later burial use. These enclosures, sometimes the remains of early medieval ecclesiastical sites, were frequently repurposed over centuries as local communities continued to inter their dead within boundaries that had long held a sense of sanctity. The burying ground at Gortarica follows this pattern, a modest, unadorned place that nonetheless carries the weight of repeated, deliberate use across generations.