These are cupmarks, shallow depressions ground or pecked into rock by prehistoric people, whose purpose remains genuinely uncertain. Ritual, territorial, astronomical, and purely symbolic functions have all been proposed, and none has been conclusively ruled out. What is not in doubt is the labour involved, or the deliberate choice of this particular stone in this particular elevated position.

The boulder is a substantial one, measuring approximately 2.85 metres in length, 2 metres in width, and 0.5 metres in height, and it bears at least twenty cupmarks, the largest reaching up to 0.22 metres in diameter. A researcher named Finlay, writing in 1973, recorded an additional six shallower examples on the stone, along with a dumbbell motif, which is a figure-of-eight shaped carving formed by two adjoining or overlapping cups. That detail places this site in a slightly more complex category than a simple scatter of hollows; the dumbbell form appears at other Irish rock art sites and suggests at least some degree of compositional intent on the part of whoever made it. The boulder also has a natural medial crack running across it, a feature that may or may not have held significance for those who chose it as a surface worth marking.