The motifs, carved into a natural rock outcrop, were noticed during road-widening operations in the 1970s and then covered over before any detailed record could be made. The outcrop runs along the northern side of the road, and by one estimate the top of the rock now sits roughly 0.7 metres higher than the road surface, suggesting the outcrop may have been cut back to accommodate the works. What was carved there, and by whom, is largely lost to the process that accidentally revealed it.

Rock art of this kind, typically comprising abstract carved motifs such as cup marks, rings, and spiral forms pecked into exposed stone surfaces, is associated in Ireland with the Later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, broadly spanning the third and second millennia BC. The Staigue example is reputed to have resembled a related carving on the far side of the river, which survives in better condition. That comparison comes from local information recorded by archaeologists Aidan O'Sullivan and John Sheehan in their 1996 survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press. A later field survey found the rock outcrop still visible intermittently along the field boundary, partly obscured by sod and grass, with the surrounding corner of the field sitting slightly higher than the ground beyond, possibly indicating where the carved surface extends beneath the turf. Other rock outcrops were noted within the adjacent field as well.

The site itself is not accessible in any conventional sense; there is nothing to see at the surface, and the carved face of the outcrop, if it survives at all, lies beneath road material and accumulated ground cover. Its interest is less as a place to visit than as a reminder of how much vanishes in the ordinary course of infrastructure work, noticed briefly and then sealed away again.