The ditch barrow that sits in wet pasture near Elton, roughly 475 metres north-east of the Morningstar River, belongs to a cluster of up to 37 possible barrows concentrated within a relatively compact area of ground, measuring around 230 metres north to south and 300 metres east to west. A barrow, in this context, is a mounded earthwork raised over a burial, often ringed by a surrounding ditch, and the type recorded here takes its name from that encircling feature. What makes this grouping quietly remarkable is less any single monument than the sheer density of them, a prehistoric cemetery sitting largely unnoticed in ordinary farmland on the Limerick plain.

The site came to light in 1982, when the Archaeology Department at University College Cork undertook a Route Selection Study for Bórd Gáis Éireann, working in consultation with ARUP Pipeline Engineering. The findings were published the following year by Woodman. Infrastructure projects of this kind have, not infrequently, produced significant archaeological discoveries in Ireland, since aerial survey and ground assessment along proposed corridors often cover terrain that had never been systematically examined. The Elton cemetery was subsequently listed by the Discovery Programme as a potential barrow site, designated Site No. 29, following examination of gas pipeline aerial imagery and a dedicated aerial photographic survey of the Bruff area carried out in 1986. More recently, a faint cropmark consistent with a barrow was still detectable on Digital Globe orthoimagery taken between 2011 and 2013. Cropmarks of this kind appear when buried features affect the growth of grass or crops above them, leaving subtle differences in colour or height that become visible from the air.

The location is in wet pasture, which means the ground is likely to be soft and uneven underfoot for much of the year, and there is no formal access or visitor infrastructure. The Morningstar River, which marks the townland boundary with Ballinvana, lies roughly half a kilometre to the south-west and provides a useful orientation point. Because the barrows register primarily as faint cropmarks rather than prominent earthworks, there is little to see at ground level without prior knowledge of what to look for and where. The most legible version of this place exists not from standing in the field, but from studying the aerial images that first revealed it, which remain the clearest record of what lies beneath the grass.