A barrow typically consists of a raised mound, sometimes ringed by a ditch, constructed over the remains of the dead. They date broadly from around 2500 to 500 BC, and while they are not uncommon in Kerry, each one marks a deliberate act of commemoration in a particular place, by particular people, for reasons that are now largely beyond recovery.

The Derreen barrow is catalogued in the archaeological inventory of south-west Kerry compiled by Aidan O'Sullivan and John Sheehan, published in 1996, which systematically documented the prehistoric and early historic monuments of the region. That inventory remains one of the more thorough records of Kerry's archaeological landscape, and the Derreen example appears within it as entry number 385. Beyond that, the specific details of this mound, its dimensions, its condition, what if anything survives of any surrounding earthworks, are contained in that published account rather than elsewhere.