These are cup-marks, shallow depressions ground or pecked into rock, typically a few centimetres across, and among the most enigmatic of all prehistoric carvings. Nobody is certain what they meant to the people who made them, and that uncertainty is part of what makes them quietly compelling. They appear across Ireland, Britain, and much of Atlantic Europe, usually on exposed rock surfaces or on stones incorporated into burial monuments, and they date broadly to the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods, though pinning down an individual example is rarely straightforward.

The stone at Maulagow measures two metres in length and just under a metre in width, and lies recumbent, meaning it rests flat on the ground rather than standing upright. The cup-marks average about seven centimetres in diameter, a fairly typical size. What gives this particular stone an added layer of interest is its proximity to a cashel, a type of stone-walled ringfort of early medieval date, which sits roughly fifteen metres to the west. Whether any deliberate relationship existed between the carved stone and the later enclosure is unknown, but it would not be unusual for early medieval communities to have been aware of, and perhaps attached significance to, prehistoric carved stones already ancient in their own time.