Ring-barrows are a type of funerary monument associated broadly with the Bronze Age and Iron Age in Ireland, consisting of a central mound surrounded by a circular ditch, known as a fosse, and an outer bank. What gives this particular example its mild air of mystery is the disturbance at the centre of the mound, a common enough occurrence at such sites, where centuries of curiosity, treasure-seeking, or agricultural activity have left their mark on the place most likely to have held a burial.

The monument at Rathbaun measures 24.6 metres across its full diameter, with the central flat-topped mound reaching 9.9 metres in diameter and just 0.6 metres in height. Surrounding it, the fosse runs between four and five metres wide, and beyond that a low external bank, now badly eroded on its northern side, completes the enclosure. The esker on which it sits is itself a relic landform, a long narrow ridge of gravel and sand deposited by meltwater beneath a glacier during the last Ice Age, and such elevated ridges were frequently chosen as burial sites, perhaps for their visibility across the surrounding landscape. The site appears in McCaffrey's work from 1952 and 1955, and was noted again by Killanin and Duignan in their 1967 survey of Irish monuments, suggesting it has drawn the attention of antiquarians and archaeologists across several generations.