These are cupmarks, the most elementary form of prehistoric rock art found across Ireland and Britain, simple bowl-shaped depressions ground or pecked into stone by people whose intentions remain genuinely unknown. They appear on exposed hilltop outcrops, inside burial monuments, and occasionally, as here, in more intimate woodland settings. What makes the Tintine example quietly unusual is the ordinariness of its situation, a modest slab of shale or slate no more than 0.6 metres long and 0.4 metres wide, set low and unassuming beside running water.

The stone itself is firmly embedded in the ground on a steep north-east-facing slope, forming part of the north-western edge of a well pool, and that position raises an interesting question about its history. The four larger cupmarks measure roughly 0.06 to 0.07 metres across with a depth of up to 0.04 metres, while a fifth, sitting nearer the thin edge of the stone, is slightly smaller and shallower. The distribution of the five marks across the flat surface is fairly even, suggesting deliberate placement rather than accidental damage. The stone may not be in its original location; it appears to have been incorporated, at some point, into the structure of the well itself, which means it could have been moved from elsewhere, perhaps long after the cupmarks were first made. Whether the well itself has any antiquity is not recorded, though the pairing of prehistoric rock art with water sources is a pattern that recurs elsewhere in Ireland.