These are cupmarks, among the most enigmatic of all prehistoric carvings: simple, bowl-shaped hollows ground or pecked into rock, found across Ireland, Britain, and much of Europe, yet still without any agreed explanation for their purpose. Ritual offering, territorial marking, astronomical notation, and simple repetitive practice have all been proposed over the decades. None has stuck. The carvings here are clustered mostly towards one end of the slab, the southern end, as though whoever made them had a particular orientation in mind.

The stone itself is substantial, measuring 4.4 metres in length and roughly 1.59 metres across at its widest, with a thickness of around 0.6 metres. Local tradition holds that it was not always recumbent. According to information gathered in the area, the stone once stood upright and occupied a slightly different position on the slope before falling or being moved to where it lies now. That kind of displacement is not unusual for standing stones in agricultural landscapes, where centuries of field clearance, ploughing, and general land management have shifted or toppled many prehistoric monuments. The cupmarks, concentrated on what is now the upper southern face, may originally have been positioned to catch light at a particular angle when the stone was still erect, though that remains speculation given what the record holds.