This is a boulder-burial, a funerary monument type found almost exclusively in the southwest of Ireland, in which a substantial capstone is elevated on a small number of uprights to create a low, dolmen-like structure. Unlike the more familiar portal tombs, boulder-burials tend to be modest in scale and easy to overlook in a working landscape, which may be part of why they remain less studied than other megalithic forms.

The Lisheen example measures 2.6 metres by 1.5 metres, with a thickness of around 0.9 metres, and its upper surface is described as somewhat rounded rather than flat. It rests on three support stones, a typical arrangement for this monument type. Boulder-burials in County Cork have been catalogued and discussed by scholars including O Nualláin and Roberts, whose work in the late 1970s and 1980s helped establish boulder-burials as a distinct class of prehistoric monument rather than collapsed or degraded versions of other megalithic structures. The precise date of construction is not established for this site, but the broader category is generally associated with the Bronze Age.