First marked on the 3rd edition Ordnance Survey map, this ancient cemetery measures roughly 43.5 metres east to west and 13.5 metres north to south. Today, the site lies heavily overgrown, its surface scattered with field clearance stones that obscure whatever monuments or markers might once have stood here. A small stream flows along the base of the slope, following its course from north-west to south-east towards the lough shore.

Archaeological testing in November 1999 revealed little about the burial ground’s history, though the investigation did uncover the site’s natural stratigraphy; layers of silts, gravels and sands beneath the stony, undulating topsoil. Twenty test trenches were excavated ahead of a housing development just east of Quigley’s Point, but no significant archaeological features emerged from the olive to yellow-brown subsoil. The burial ground itself remains undisturbed, its secrets preserved beneath the tangle of vegetation and accumulated stones.

The wider area has seen various archaeological investigations over the years, including monitoring work on the Clar-Barnesmore road realignment between 1999 and 2000. That project, stretching from Spierstown to Friarbush, uncovered a drying kiln at Keadew Lower but little else of note; just the typical drumlin landscape of Donegal with its peaty gleys and boulder clay overlying limestone bedrock. The Carrowkeel burial ground stands as one of many such sites documented in the Archaeological Survey of County Donegal, compiled in 1983, which catalogued field antiquities from the Mesolithic period through to the 17th century.