A cairn, in this context, is a mound of heaped stones raised over a burial or used to mark a significant point in the landscape, a practice common across prehistoric Ireland. This particular example is roughly thirteen metres in diameter and just over a metre high, though those figures can be difficult to read on the ground: the whole thing is largely swallowed by a growth of peat and heather, leaving its outline soft and ambiguous against the hillside. What gives it away, if you know to look, is a small secondary pile of stones raised on the western side, sitting noticeably above the general level of the mound.

The cairn is positioned towards the north-eastern side of the peak rather than dead centre, which in itself is a small puzzle. More striking is its situation within a wider prehistoric network: the cairns on Doomore lie roughly 320 metres to the east, and on clear days the famous passage tomb mound on Knocknarea, as well as Knocknashee to the south-south-east, come into view. This kind of deliberate visual alignment between monuments is a recurring feature of the Neolithic and Bronze Age landscape of the west of Ireland, where hilltop cairns seem to have been positioned so that the living could see them and, perhaps, so that each site acknowledged the others across the intervening miles. A smaller companion cairn lies about four metres to the south, the two structures sitting close enough together that they may well have formed part of a single funerary or ceremonial complex, though the peat that now covers much of the hill makes it difficult to be certain of anything beyond the outlines.