Yet in wet pasture roughly 300 metres northeast of the Morningstar River, which marks the boundary between the townlands of Elton and Ballinvana, a faint circular trace in the ground points to what archaeologists classify as a ditch barrow, a type of funerary mound typically defined by a surrounding ditch and, in some cases, an outer bank. The feature is subtle enough that it remained unrecorded for most of the twentieth century, visible now mainly as a crop or soil mark when conditions are right.

The site's existence only came to light in 1982, and in circumstances that had nothing to do with a deliberate search for ancient burial grounds. The Archaeology Department at University College Cork was commissioned to carry out a Route Selection Study for Bórd Gáis Éireann, working in consultation with ARUP Pipeline Engineering. The resulting survey, documented by Woodman in 1983, identified not just this barrow but a concentration of up to 37 possible barrows within an area measuring roughly 230 metres north to south and 300 metres east to west, now collectively referred to as the Elton barrow cemetery. The site catalogued here was listed as Site No. 38 during a subsequent aerial photographic survey carried out over Bruff in 1986, with the reference Bruff AP 2123. Decades later, a faint trace of the feature was still discernible on a Google Earth orthoimage captured in March 2018, confirming that something remains beneath the surface even if its outline is far from dramatic at ground level.

Access to the site is across private farmland, so any visit would require the landowner's permission. The pasture is described as wet, which in a Limerick context means the ground can be heavy and waterlogged for much of the year; drier late-summer conditions are likely to give the best chance of reading the landscape. The barrow itself offers little to see with the naked eye at ground level, and its significance is best appreciated through the aerial images that first revealed it. Anyone with a particular interest in the wider Elton barrow cemetery would do well to consult the National Monuments Service record, which holds the full suite of associated site numbers, and to compare the aerial photographs taken during the 1986 Bruff survey with the more recent satellite imagery.