Quietly occupying the western edge of the Monks' Graveyard, however, is a small slab that rewards a closer look precisely because of its modesty. Measuring just 45 centimetres tall, 24 centimetres wide, and a mere 4 centimetres thick, it is less a cross in the monumental sense and more a thin, flat-headed piece of rough stone, marked by three shallow notches cut into its edges: two on the left side, one on the right.

The notching is what sets it apart. Early medieval Irish stone crosses, including the simple incised slabs common to monastic sites along the western seaboard, vary enormously in their ambition and finish. Some are elaborately carved; others are little more than a scratch on a surface. This slab sits somewhere in that quieter tradition, its three notches suggesting an intention to mark and distinguish rather than to impress. Whether those notches carried symbolic meaning, served as a practical marker within the graveyard, or simply reflect the tools and hands available on a remote Atlantic island is not recorded. It stands on the western side of the Monks' Graveyard, a burial ground associated with the community of monks who occupied Skellig Michael from at least the early medieval period, living in those corbelled stone cells on a rock roughly 12 kilometres off the Kerry coast.