The quartz is the detail that catches the eye. White quartz was associated in prehistoric Ireland with ritual and the marking of significant places, and its presence here, alongside a carefully edged cairn, hints at something more deliberate than a simple field clearance.

The cairn is one of two similarly proportioned mounds, each roughly two metres by 1.7 metres, positioned at the south-eastern and south-western corners of the graveyard. Both were identified during a University College Dublin School of Archaeology research and teaching project that ran across three seasons between 2004 and 2006, led by researchers O'Sullivan and Warren. A cairn, in its simplest definition, is a built-up pile of stones or earth and stones, often associated with burial or territorial marking, though the function of any individual example depends heavily on context. Here, the pairing of the two cairns at opposing corners of the graveyard, Templefinan, suggests a spatial logic that may pre-date or at least complicate the Christian associations of the site itself. The graveyard takes its name from a local church dedication, but the cairns may belong to an older layer of use of this hillside entirely.