That both could survive at all on a piece this size speaks to the density of craft that early medieval Irish stone-carvers brought to the high cross form, those tall ringed crosses whose scale and iconographic complexity were once among the most ambitious art objects in northern Europe.

The fragment belongs to Cill Éinne, the ancient monastic settlement on Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands. It came to light in 1985 during an archaeological excavation just outside the east gable of Teaghlach Éinne, a church site associated with Saint Éanna, the early Christian monk credited with founding the community there. The cross head, which measures more than 0.52 metres across the arms and 0.5 metres in height, retains its ring, the characteristic circular band that joins the arms of an Irish high cross, and its deep cusps, the concave cuts between arms and ring that give these crosses their distinctive silhouette. The limestone is damaged, and the piece is clearly a fragment rather than a complete monument, but enough survives to show that it was once a finely worked object. Its original location was elsewhere on the site, and it had evidently been displaced before excavation brought it back into record.