Stone rows, a prehistoric monument type found in some concentration across the Iveragh Peninsula and the wider Kerry landscape, are thought to date broadly to the Bronze Age, though their precise function remains a matter of debate among archaeologists. Astronomical alignment, ritual procession, and territorial marking have all been proposed at various times, and the honest answer is that no one yet knows with certainty what they were for. That ambiguity is part of what makes them compelling.

The Derrineden row sits in the topographical divide between the Cummeragh and Inny valleys, a position on the ridge of Coomduff that would have commanded a relationship with the surrounding landscape even if we cannot now say exactly what that relationship meant. The four stones are not uniform. The tallest, the second from the north-east end, stands 2.65 metres high, making it a substantial upright by any measure. The others diminish, the third being the smallest of the group, and the fourth stone leans slightly to the south-east as if slowly conceding to gravity after a very long wait. The row was documented by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in their archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996, and it is from that survey that the detailed measurements of each stone are drawn. The fact that it never made it onto the OS maps is in keeping with how many such monuments exist in Kerry, present in the ground and in specialist literature but invisible to the ordinary map reader walking past.