The boulder is not especially large, measuring about 1.65 metres north to south and 1.32 metres east to west, but its decorated surface draws attention once you know where to look. Clustered near the southern edge of the flat rock face is a tight group of approximately eighteen pickmarks, each only five to seven millimetres across and two millimetres deep. These are the kind of marks, sometimes called cupmarks or pecked hollows, produced by prehistoric people repeatedly striking stone against stone in a technique known as pecking or picking. A single shallow cupmark, wider at five centimetres in diameter, sits separately at the south-eastern edge. What made someone choose this particular boulder, on this particular spur, is not known.

The setting may offer a partial answer, or at least a context. The boulder faces south-east, and the decorated surface itself has a gentle east-facing aspect, oriented towards a landscape that opens dramatically in several directions. To the south and south-east lies the valley of the Meelagh River; to the north-east the view runs along the valley floor towards Caragh Lake; and to the east-north-east rise the MacGillycuddy's Reeks, with Carrauntoohill, the highest peak in Ireland, visible on the horizon. Whether the placement was deliberate in relation to these landmarks is a question prehistorians continue to debate when it comes to Irish rock art generally. Sites of this kind, scattered across the uplands of Kerry and beyond, are typically assigned to the later Neolithic or early Bronze Age, though the marks themselves carry no date and leave no written record of intent. A large circular solution mark, a natural feature formed by weathering, sits at the eastern edge of the boulder's surface, and a sod of turf and furze encroaches from the west, blurring the boundary between the worked and the merely weathered.