It is not enormous, standing just 1.3 metres high, but its placement feels deliberate in the way that prehistoric standing stones so often do, positioned where the landscape opens up rather than where the ground is simply flat.

The stone has a rectangular profile and an oval base measuring 1.2 metres by 0.35 metres, oriented roughly NNE to SSW. Standing stones of this kind are among the most common and least understood monuments in the Irish prehistoric record. They were erected during the Bronze Age in most cases, though the purposes attributed to them vary widely, from boundary markers and ritual focal points to astronomical alignments. What is consistent across many examples is exactly this quality of placement, a commanding view, a relationship with water or valley topography, a sense that whoever chose the spot was thinking about the wider terrain rather than simply driving a stone into convenient ground. Whether that northward view along the Ardsheelhane valley was meaningful to the people who raised this particular stone, or coincidental, is not something the archaeology can answer. The Iveragh Peninsula, of which this area forms part, is dense with prehistoric monuments, and individual stones like this one can easily be passed over in favour of the more elaborate ring forts and promontory forts that draw attention across south Kerry.