Nineteen such structures were identified during field survey of the bog, and their preservation owes everything to the anaerobic conditions of the wetland, which effectively seal organic material against decay. They are not dramatic monuments in any conventional sense, but their quiet persistence in the bog raises questions about who built them, and why.

The platforms were constructed primarily from brushwood and roundwood, the basic timber resources of any woodland edge. In several cases, small anchoring pegs were driven in to hold the structure in place, and two of the platforms incorporated woven brushwood, suggesting a more deliberate, almost basketwork technique. Wood species identified across nine of the sites included alder, ash, birch, hazel, and willow, all trees characteristic of wet, marginal woodland. Radiocarbon dating from four of the platforms places their construction across a remarkably long span, from the Late Bronze Age, somewhere between 792 and 526 BC, through to the Iron Age, with one platform dated to between 351 and 120 BC. Wetland platforms of this kind are thought to have served various purposes in prehistoric Ireland, from walkways and fishing stations to places where offerings were deposited in water, though the specific function of any individual structure is rarely easy to determine.

Derryville Bog sits in an area of the midlands that has yielded considerable evidence of prehistoric activity, and the platforms at Cooleeny form part of that broader pattern of human use of bogland as a working, meaningful landscape rather than simply an obstacle to be avoided.