Measuring roughly 0.4 metres by 0.3 metres by 0.2 metres, it was found beside a wall behind a house in Comalán, and its surface bears seven cupmarks in total: two placed centrally and five others of a shallower cut scattered around them. Cupmarks are among the most enigmatic features of prehistoric archaeology, simple circular depressions pecked or ground into rock, found across Ireland, Britain, and much of Europe, and interpreted variously as territorial symbols, ritual markers, or astronomical records. None of those theories has ever quite settled the matter.

The stone came from Cape Clear Island, Oileán Chléire, the southernmost inhabited island in Ireland, off the coast of West Cork. Its precise age is unknown, as cupmarked stones are notoriously difficult to date in isolation, but they are generally associated with the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods, a broad span running from roughly 4000 to 500 BC. That a stone of this kind was found casually beside a field wall, rather than at any obviously ceremonial or monumental site, is itself telling. Cupmarked stones turn up in domestic and agricultural contexts across Ireland, often reused as building material over the centuries, their original purpose long forgotten by the people who incorporated them into walls and foundations. This one, at least, was recognised before it disappeared entirely into the fabric of a field boundary.