The barrow at Gortnascarry sits in reclaimed rough pasture roughly 140 metres east-northeast of the Mulkear River in County Limerick, and it never appeared on any Ordnance Survey Ireland historic maps. For a structure of its scale, that invisibility is remarkable. A barrow, in the Irish archaeological sense, is a burial mound or funerary enclosure, typically defined by a raised earthen mound, an encircling ditch known as a fosse, and an outer bank. The Gortnascarry example is large: the full monument measures approximately 85 metres north to south and 50 metres east to west, making the low central mound, just half a metre high and roughly 10 metres across, feel almost modest at its core.

The site came to light in 1998 when archaeologist Frank Coyne carried out test trenching under licence number 98E0196. What the trenches revealed was more complex than the surface suggested. The fosse, the ditch encircling the central mound, was waterlogged and contained timber settings, the preserved remnants of wooden structures placed within it. From that waterlogged fill came a blue glass bead of Iron Age date, a small but precise chronological marker that places human activity here somewhere in the centuries around the turn of the first millennium. A worked flint flake was also recovered from the surface of the central mound, pointing to earlier activity, though without further excavation its precise context remains open. Adding a further layer of historical layering, the eastern edge of the monument is bisected by the townland boundary of Gortnagarde, a later administrative line drawn without apparent awareness of what lay beneath the grass.

The monument is preserved in situ, meaning nothing has been removed or significantly altered since its identification. Access is across private agricultural land, so any visit would require the landowner's permission beforehand. Because the central mound rises only half a metre above the surrounding pasture, it reads more clearly in low winter light when shadows lengthen across the ground surface and the subtle earthwork topography becomes easier to read. The fosse and outer bank are the features most worth orienting yourself toward once you arrive. The blue glass bead that emerged from this quiet field is now part of the excavation record, a small object that travels a long way from its origins each time someone reads the site report.