The ring-barrow at Doonvullen Upper, a circular earthwork of roughly twelve metres in external diameter, never made it onto the Ordnance Survey Ireland historic maps, and by the time satellite imagery caught up with the site in the early twenty-first century, the monument had effectively vanished back into the landscape. Ring-barrows are a type of funerary monument associated broadly with the Bronze Age, typically consisting of a low central mound enclosed by a surrounding ditch and outer bank. This one, however, announced itself only briefly and from the air.

The site came to light during the Bruff aerial photographic survey of 1986, when the ring-barrow showed up clearly enough in the survey imagery, catalogued under reference Bruff 24602 (AP 4/3689), to be formally identified and recorded. A companion monument, registered separately as LI023-181, lies just ten metres to the northwest, suggesting this corner of south County Limerick may have held more significance in prehistory than the current low-lying pasture would imply. The record was compiled by Edmond O'Donovan and uploaded to the national monuments database in September 2020. By that point, satellite orthophotos taken between 2011 and 2013 via Digital Globe, and again on a Google Earth image from June 2018, showed no trace of the monument at all. The ground had reclaimed it.

What survives today is subtle to the point of near-invisibility. The area sits within wet, reedy pasture cut through by land drains and watercourses, and the ring-barrow now presents itself, if at all, as a slightly drier patch of grass amid the surrounding reeds. A relic field boundary or drain, orientated roughly north-northeast to south-southwest, has been cut through the eastern side of the monument. There is no signage, no formal access, and no reason a passing visitor would pause here. The 1986 aerial survey image remains the clearest record of what lies beneath the rushes, and anyone with a serious interest in the site would do well to consult that archive alongside the national monuments register entry before making the trip.