Ranging from ten to twenty metres across and around half a metre deep, the excavations vary considerably in size and shape, suggesting they were dug at different times or for different purposes rather than as part of a single organised operation.

The pits first came to official attention not through ground survey but through aerial photography, appearing in the Government of Ireland aerial photographic archive and subsequently listed in the Sites and Monuments Record in 1989 under the classification of quarry pits. When archaeologists visited in 2001 to assess them directly, the physical evidence pointed to a relatively recent origin, placing them well outside the prehistoric or medieval periods that Keshcorran is more typically associated with. The hill itself has a long archaeological presence, including caves that feature in early Irish legend and a substantial hillfort on its summit, which makes the modest, modern-looking pits on its lower slopes a quietly anticlimactic entry in the record. Quarrying of this kind, extracting stone or aggregate for local use, was common throughout rural Ireland into the twentieth century, and the irregular spacing here is consistent with small-scale opportunistic extraction rather than commercial operation.