The arrangement is odd enough to catch the eye, even from the air, which is precisely how it was first identified, through aerial photography rather than any ground-level survey.

The monument is a ditch barrow, a type of low funerary mound defined not by an earthen bank raised around it but by a surrounding fosse, a shallow ditch, dug at ground level. This particular example is modest in scale, measuring roughly 3.75 metres north to south and 3.6 metres east to west, with a fosse running from the north-east, around the south, to the west. Where the ditch approaches the outer slope of the enclosure bank to the north, it becomes harder to trace, gradually dissolving into the fall of the ground. The interior rises in a low, dome-shaped profile, subtle enough that it might easily be mistaken for a natural undulation in the field. What makes the situation at Lissobihane particularly interesting is the relationship between the two features: the barrow is not simply near the enclosure but physically intrudes upon its bank, suggesting either that the mound was inserted into an already-existing enclosure, or that the two features were laid out in deliberate proximity. Either way, the northern bank was sacrificed, or at least disrupted, to accommodate it.