What makes it unusual is not simply its age but its complexity: this is a multivallate ring-barrow, meaning it is defined not by a single enclosing bank and ditch but by multiple such circuits, one nested within the next. Ring-barrows are a class of funerary earthwork associated broadly with the Bronze Age, typically consisting of a low central mound or flat area enclosed by one or more banks, with intervening ditches called fosses. Several such circuits survive here, at least in part, wrapping around a roughly circular interior some 50 metres in diameter.

The monument forms part of a denser prehistoric landscape. A henge, a type of ceremonial enclosure usually defined by a bank set outside its ditch, abuts the barrow closely to the south-east, and further earthworks lie to the east and west. The barrow itself retains a reasonably well-preserved inner fosse, roughly 5.4 metres wide, with a causeway crossing it on the east-south-east side, suggesting a deliberate entrance through the enclosure. Beyond that, additional banks and fosses survive in the south to south-west sector, and the possibility of a further outermost fosse has been noted. Much of the monument has been altered over time, partly by agricultural drainage: a leat, a channel cut to carry off water, intersects the inner fosse at two points, and a raised area in the northern sector may itself be a product of drainage rather than original construction. The innermost bank has spread and flattened on its western side, blurring what was once a more clearly defined edge.

The slope on which all of this sits looks southward towards Slievenamon, the distinctively isolated mountain that rises above the Tipperary plain and carries its own weight of mythology and association. That orientation feels less like coincidence than intention, though the monument yields no easy explanation for it.