The standing stone at Cousane is precisely that: a subrectangular block, 1.35 metres high, 1.2 metres wide, and just 0.45 metres thick, oriented along an east-north-east to west-south-west axis. That deliberate alignment is what separates it from a farmer's boundary marker or a glacial erratic. Someone, at some point in prehistory, chose this orientation carefully.

Standing stones of this kind are scattered across Cork and Kerry in considerable numbers, and while their precise purpose is rarely certain, they are generally associated with the Bronze Age, somewhere in the broad range of 2000 to 500 BC. Some align with solar or lunar events; others appear to mark territorial boundaries, ritual landscapes, or routes through the terrain. What the Cousane stone adds to this ambiguity is its position: it sits with a commanding view to the north, which suggests its placement was not incidental. Whether the view itself was the point, or whether the elevated ground simply made the stone visible from a distance, is the kind of question that prehistoric monuments tend to answer with silence.