But several large upright stones, or orthostats, breaking through the turf signal something far older. This is a wedge tomb, one of the most numerous megalithic tomb types in Ireland, built during the later Neolithic and into the Bronze Age, generally characterised by a gallery that narrows and lowers from one end to the other, typically oriented to the west or south-west. The Carrowbaun example measures roughly eight metres on its long axis and five metres across, rising no more than about half a metre to just under a metre above the ground.

What survives here appears to be the north-eastern end of the gallery. A double row of orthostats runs along the north-western side of the mound, and a perpendicular upright slab forms a facing on the north-eastern end, together suggesting the orientation of the original burial chamber on a north-east to south-west axis. The stones themselves are relatively modest in scale, each roughly sixty centimetres wide and tall. A modern field fence cuts across the mound on an east to west line, a quiet reminder that farming and prehistory have had to negotiate the same ground for centuries. The tomb does not stand in isolation either: two raths, the circular earthwork enclosures associated with early medieval settlement and farming, lie within a few hundred metres to the north-west and north-north-west, suggesting this stretch of Carrowbaun has been drawing people back, in different ways and for different reasons, across a very long span of time. From the ridge, Nephin Mountain is visible on the north-western skyline, the same view that would have been open to whoever chose this spot several thousand years ago.