These are cupmarks, shallow depressions ground or pecked into rock surfaces, whose purpose remains genuinely unresolved. They appear on prehistoric monuments across Ireland and Britain, sometimes in isolation, sometimes in clusters, and occasionally, as here, arranged into something that looks almost deliberate. At Raheen, several of the cupmarks form what researchers have described as a petal-like pattern, which sets this stone apart from the many plainer examples scattered across the Irish landscape.

The stone itself stands 2.3 metres tall and has a trapezoidal ground plan, wider at the south and east faces than at the north and west. It sits at a break in slope in a field of rough pasture, positioned to the east of the N81 and the river valley, on ground that falls away to the west. The decorated southern face was noted by Briley as far back as 1898, and the site was subsequently examined by Ua Broin in 1957 and by Healy in 1975, whose work on the cupmarks remains one of the more detailed treatments of the monument. The stone was compiled into the archaeological record by Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy.

The stone lies east of the N81, which runs through west County Dublin into Wicklow, and the surrounding field of rough pasture means the going underfoot can be soft depending on the season. The cupmarks are concentrated on the southern face, so that is where your attention should go once you are close enough. Low, raking light, either early morning or late afternoon, does considerably more work than midday sun in picking out shallow surface carving, and the petal arrangement in particular is easier to read under those conditions. The average diameter of each cup is around six centimetres, small enough that they reward close inspection rather than a glance from a distance.