The walls, both linear and curvilinear in form, are not dramatic landmarks; they protrude only around 0.25 metres above the surrounding surface and are roughly 0.7 metres thick. What makes them quietly arresting is the scale of what they represent. Taken together, the remains span a roughly rectangular area of approximately 400 metres east to west and 150 metres north to south, a substantial agricultural landscape that now lies largely submerged.

Bog formation is, in archaeological terms, a kind of slow burial. As waterlogged conditions develop over centuries, layers of peat accumulate and engulf whatever lay on the earlier ground surface, preserving stone, timber, and organic material that would otherwise have decayed. Field systems swallowed by bog in this way tend to predate the peat's growth, and in the Irish context such remains are often associated with Bronze Age or early medieval farming communities, though without excavation it is rarely possible to be precise. At Scarteen, some sections of the walls vanish entirely into the deeper bog, meaning that what is visible on the surface is only a fraction of what may survive below, intact and untouched beneath the peat.