They are easy to underestimate: the larger of the pair measures just eight metres by six, and neither rises more than half a metre from the ground. Yet cairns of this kind, stone mounds built up by human hands rather than geological accident, represent some of the oldest deliberate constructions in the Irish countryside, and their placement here was clearly not casual.

What is striking about the Potaley site is its position. The outcrop commands panoramic views in every direction, a quality that recurs again and again in the siting of prehistoric cairns across Ireland. Whether these mounds served as burial markers, territorial signals, or waypoints in a landscape that people moved through seasonally, the elevated ground would have given them visibility from a considerable distance. The larger mound still shows loose stone in its make-up, suggesting the cairn form rather than an earthen barrow, though both remain low and relatively modest in scale. A survey of the Lee Valley area carried out in 1996 and 1997 recorded both mounds, placing them within a broader pattern of prehistoric activity across this part of Kerry.