The features in question are ring-ditches, a term for the circular or near-circular ditched enclosures that archaeology associates broadly with prehistoric burial or ritual activity. They are the eroded remnants of what were once, in many cases, earthen barrows or mound burials, worn so low over millennia that the ditch alone survives as a soil-mark or crop-mark, legible only from the air. At Ballynaveen, not one but three such features have been identified, and this particular example appears to be physically conjoined with a neighbouring ring-ditch, the two overlapping or touching in a way that hints at repeated or extended use of the same ground across a long period.

The site came to light not through excavation but through the study of aerial photographs, specifically Ordnance Survey images referenced as 2402/3, which captured the subtle discolouration in vegetation or soil that betrays buried features invisible at ground level. Walking the field today, you would find ordinary pasture with moderate views across the undulating landscape. The ground has been disturbed relatively recently; the area appears to have had topsoil and small rubble spread across it within the last decade or so before the site was recorded, which will not have helped the preservation of whatever shallow archaeology remains. A further ring-ditch lies approximately fifty metres to the south, suggesting that this part of Tipperary was once a meaningful place in the landscape, used and reused by communities whose precise intentions remain unknown.