It is the kind of alignment that suggests intention rather than accident, and the people who raised these stones clearly understood both the landscape and the sky above it.

The circle at Derreenataggart is thought to have originally comprised fifteen stones, though only twelve now remain upright or in place; three of those survivors have fallen and lie prostrate on the ground. Orthostats, the individual standing stones that form the ring, range considerably in size, from 0.4 metres to 2.4 metres in length and between 1.25 and 1.9 metres in height, giving the circle a varied, uneven profile rather than the uniform grandeur one might expect. The internal measurement along the main east-west axis runs to 7.8 metres. Ó Nualláin, who catalogued the site in 1984, placed it among a broader tradition of multiple-stone circles found across west Cork and Kerry, a regional monument type that seems to date broadly to the Bronze Age. These circles are distinguished from the better-known recumbent stone circles of other traditions by their use of numerous smaller orthostats rather than a few massive ones, and their consistent axial orientations suggest some relationship with solar or seasonal cycles, though the precise function of any individual circle remains a matter of interpretation rather than settled fact.