The whole composition fits inside an irregular stone that is neither cleanly rectangular nor particularly imposing, yet the carving suggests considerable intentionality. It is the kind of object that rewards close attention rather than a glance from a distance.

The slab was recovered from a deposit of silt and grit on High Island, known in Irish as Ardoileán, off the Connemara coast in County Galway. It lay overlying a leacht, which is a low, open-air stone monument associated with early Christian devotion, typically used as a focus for prayer or commemoration. Its position was to the east of a clochan, one of the dry-stone beehive cells that survive across the island's early medieval monastic complex, which also includes a church and other structural remains. The slab may originally have stood upright on or beside the leacht, functioning as a devotional marker within the monastery's outdoor ritual landscape. It was catalogued by Fisher in 2014, as part of a broader excavation report on the island's early medieval monastery, and its findspot places it firmly within the organised spatial logic of that community's religious life. The stone itself, garnet mica-schist, is a metamorphic rock whose flecked, slightly lustrous surface would have given the carved lines a particular character in low Atlantic light. At present the slab is held in the Office of Public Works depot on the island rather than remaining at the location where it was found.