The ditch barrow at Ballyfauskeen in County Limerick has left no visible trace above ground, no raised earthwork, no stone, nothing that a person walking the reclaimed pasture would notice underfoot. What it left behind is a circular cropmark, the kind of ghostly imprint that appears when buried features affect how grass or grain grows above them, betraying the outline of a ditch that once surrounded a burial mound long since levelled or absorbed into the soil. It is a monument you can only see, in effect, from the air.

The site sits roughly ten metres east of the townland boundary with Curraghturk, and it does not appear on any Ordnance Survey Ireland historic maps, which suggests it had already lost its surface presence before systematic mapping of the landscape began. It was not recorded until an oblique aerial photograph, catalogued as ASIAP (34) 20 and dated to January 2003, revealed the circular cropmark clearly enough to identify it as a barrow. A further, fainter impression was later confirmed on a Google Earth orthoimage taken in October 2006. Fifteen metres to the northwest lies a separate enclosure, recorded as LI049-188, indicating that this corner of Ballyfauskeen preserves more than one buried feature from earlier occupation of the land. The record was compiled by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded to the national monuments database in October 2021.

There is no practical way to visit this site in the conventional sense. The barrow lies in reclaimed agricultural pasture and is not visible at ground level. The aerial photographs held through the Archaeological Survey of Ireland are the most useful way to engage with what was recorded here. For anyone with a particular interest in how aerial survey has transformed the understanding of Irish prehistory, this site is a useful case study; it is a reminder that the known archaeological record is substantially shaped by the technology and conditions, drought years tend to produce the sharpest cropmarks, that made detection possible in the first place.