The arrangement is not accidental. Measuring roughly 2.75 metres long, 1.7 metres wide, and 1.5 metres tall, the whole structure belongs to a category of prehistoric monument known as a boulder-burial, in which a substantial capstone is elevated above the earth on smaller uprights, with no surrounding kerb or covering mound to explain it away as a collapsed portal tomb. They are found almost exclusively in the southwest of Ireland, concentrated in Cork and Kerry, and their precise funerary or ritual function remains a matter of debate among archaeologists.

A prostrate slab lies about 1.5 metres to the south of the main monument, measuring just over two metres in length. Scholars have suggested it may be a fallen standing stone rather than a displaced element of the boulder-burial itself, which would imply that this hillside once held at least two distinct prehistoric features in close proximity. The site was noted by Seán Ó Nualláin in 1978 and later catalogued by Roberts in 1988, placing it within a broader attempt to map and classify what remains a relatively obscure monument type. The elevated position, looking out over the Ilen estuary to the northwest, is characteristic of how such structures were sited, suggesting the people who built them were attentive to landscape in ways that are now difficult to fully recover.