They protrude above the sod rather than lying flat, catching the eye without announcing themselves, and the working interpretation is that they mark graves, though even that much carries a degree of uncertainty.

The slabs sit within the south-eastern quadrant of a cashel, a type of early medieval stone ringfort enclosed by a substantial circular wall, and they lie to the east and south of a leacht. A leacht is a low, roughly built cairn or platform of stones, typically associated with early Christian devotional practice, often functioning as a memorial or a site for prayer in the landscape around a church or monastic enclosure. That combination, a cashel containing a leacht and what appear to be grave markers, points to an early ecclesiastical or at least religiously significant use of the site. The possible graves were noted by Dr J. Waddell, and the tentative language around them reflects how much of Inis Oírr's archaeology resists straightforward classification. The island's limestone bedrock, which breaks naturally into flat, usable slabs, means that stones appearing at the surface are not always what they seem, and distinguishing deliberate grave markers from the island's general geology requires careful attention.