It is easy to mistake the whole assembly for simply dramatic scenery, but the boulder-burial at Kealagowlane is a deliberately constructed prehistoric monument, a flat capstone raised off the ground on support-stones to create a small covered chamber. The cover-stone here measures 1.3 metres by 0.95 metres and stands roughly half a metre high, resting on two support-stones to the north and a pad-stone to the south, itself braced by two smaller stones beneath. The result is something between a table and a threshold, compact but intentional.

Boulder-burials are a monument type found almost exclusively in south-west Ireland, particularly in Cork and Kerry, and they belong broadly to the Bronze Age. What makes Kealagowlane particularly interesting is its relationship to the surrounding landscape. The boulder-burial does not stand alone; it sits just north of the centre of a multiple-stone circle, itself a significant prehistoric feature. Within roughly 115 metres to the north and north-west, the site is accompanied by a cairn, a stone-and-earth mound typically associated with burial, two burnt mounds, and a fulacht fia. A fulacht fia is a prehistoric cooking or industrial site, usually identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stones beside a trough or stream, and they are among the most common Bronze Age monuments in Ireland. The presence of all these features clustered together on the same stream-side terrace suggests this was not incidental use of the landscape but a place of sustained and varied activity over a long period.