Cup-marks, as these deliberate depressions are known, appear across prehistoric Europe, and while their precise purpose remains contested, they are generally associated with ritual or ceremonial activity during the Bronze Age. That this particular stone was covered over and apparently sealed beneath a mound only deepens the puzzle. It was not a marker left in the open for the living to gather around; it was placed out of sight.

The slab came to light during an excavation in 1959, the findings of which were published by Fahy in 1961. It measures roughly two metres in height and 1.2 metres across, and is relatively thin at around 0.1 metres. What makes its discovery especially interesting is the company it keeps. Approximately ten metres to the north-west lies a multiple stone circle, one of the recumbent stone circles characteristic of this part of Cork and Kerry, where a large horizontal stone is flanked by standing uprights. A boulder burial, a prehistoric monument type in which a large boulder is set over a small stone-lined grave, sits nearby to the north-east, and the remains of a hut site lie to the south-west. Taken together, this cluster of monuments in a level area of pasture suggests that the Bohonagh landscape was a site of sustained and varied activity during prehistory, rather than the location of any single event or purpose. The cupmarked stone, hidden as it was, formed one quiet element within a broader arrangement of monuments whose full logic is now largely beyond recovery.