What sets this pair apart is their deliberate alignment and the care someone took, a very long time ago, to place them precisely one metre apart along a northeast to southwest axis, a orientation that recurs across prehistoric stone settings throughout Munster and that is thought by some researchers to relate to solar or lunar events on the horizon.

The taller of the two, the northeast stone, reaches two metres in height and measures 1.2 metres in length and 0.7 metres in thickness. Its companion to the southwest is slightly more modest at 1.6 metres tall. Together they span a combined length of 2.95 metres. Around them lies a scatter of additional stones, including a loose quartzite block between the pair and another at the northeastern foot of the northern stone, as well as a third stone partially exposed beside the southwestern upright. These appear to be the accumulated result of field clearance rather than any original prehistoric arrangement, the kind of stony overflow that generations of farmers pushed to the edges of workable ground. Their presence complicates the picture slightly but does not obscure it. The site was catalogued by Seán Ó Nualláin in 1988, whose systematic survey of paired and multiple standing stones across Ireland remains a key reference for this class of monument.

Paired standing stones of this type are generally understood to belong to the Bronze Age, though precise dating without excavation is difficult. They are distinct from the larger stone rows and stone circles found elsewhere in Cork and Kerry, being more intimate in scale and sometimes interpreted as markers for routeways, boundaries, or burial locations. The rolling arable land around Shandangan gives this pair a quietly exposed quality; they sit on the shoulder of the slope with the ground falling away to the southwest, which means the alignment, whatever its original intention, points outward across open country.