It only betrays itself from the air, where differences in soil moisture cause the crops above it to grow at a slightly different rate, producing the faint discolouration known as a cropmark. Ring-ditches of this kind are the subsurface ghosts of prehistoric funerary or ritual enclosures, the circular trenches that once surrounded a burial mound or defined a ceremonial space, long since ploughed flat. What remains is essentially a negative impression in the earth, the filled-in ditch retaining enough organic material to influence what grows above it centuries or millennia later.

The feature at Dunboyne came to light through aerial imagery, first noted by Donal Lucy and subsequently visible on both Bing and Google Earth images captured in 2013 and 2018. It sits just north of what was once a field bank running east-northeast to west-southwest, itself now gone, though its associated drainage ditches leave their own faint cropmark traces. The site does not stand alone in the landscape: a related enclosure and a second ring-ditch lie approximately 250 metres to the south. When a gradiometer survey, a non-invasive technique that maps subsurface features by measuring variations in the earth's magnetic field, was carried out by Earthsound as part of a development assessment, it confirmed the ring-ditch and identified further anomalies nearby. Archaeological testing followed in 2017 under D. McIlreavy, though the ring-ditch itself was left untouched. The decision was made to preserve it in place within the footprint of the development rather than excavate it, meaning whatever it contains, cremated bone, a central burial, or simply an empty enclosure, remains sealed underground.