A circular ditch roughly fifteen metres across lies beneath agricultural land in County Kilkenny, invisible at ground level but legible from the air under the right conditions, when a dry summer causes the soil above the buried feature to behave differently from the surrounding earth, producing a faint discolouration in the growing crop. These ghostly outlines, known as cropmarks, are among the principal ways that archaeologists have expanded their understanding of the Irish landscape without ever breaking the ground.

The ring-ditch at Dundaryark was identified through aerial photography in August 1996. A ring-ditch is the circular trench that once surrounded a prehistoric burial mound or barrow; in most cases the mound itself has long since been ploughed away, leaving only the ditch as evidence that something significant once stood there. What gives this particular site additional weight is its context. Two further ring-ditches have been recorded approximately 250 metres and 300 metres to the south-west, raising the possibility that all three form part of a barrow group, a cluster of burial monuments that would have served a community over generations, and which can indicate a landscape of considerable prehistoric ritual importance. Barrow groups of this kind are well attested across Ireland and Britain, often marking places that held ceremonial significance across long periods.