It belongs to a category of structure known as a togher, an ancient trackway built to carry people and animals across waterlogged or boggy ground that would otherwise have been impassable. The fact that it is classified as a class 3 togher places it within a broader typology developed for Irish wetland archaeology, distinguishing it by its method of construction from simpler brushwood paths or more elaborate plank roads.

The trackway was recorded during a field survey in 1988 and published by Barry Raftery in 1990. Raftery was one of the foremost scholars of Irish Iron Age archaeology, and his survey work on bog roads brought systematic attention to a category of monument that had long been overlooked simply because it sits beneath peat rather than above ground. Toghers of this kind are remarkable survivals; the anaerobic conditions of a bog preserve organic material, including timber, that would rot away almost entirely in drier soils. The orientation of the Annaghbeg example, running ENE to WSW, may reflect a now-vanished logic of movement across the landscape, connecting points whose significance has long since disappeared from memory or record.