The carving is of the cup-and-ring type, a form found widely across Atlantic Europe, in which a shallow circular depression, the cup, is surrounded by one or more incised concentric rings. At Kealduff the pattern is a cup with two rings. The upper surface of the boulder is badly weathered, and the motifs are faint enough that they might be missed entirely even by someone standing directly over them.

The site was recorded and published by Aidan O'Sullivan and John Sheehan in their 1996 archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, where it appears as entry number 343. The boulder sits at approximately 150 metres above sea level, just east of a field wall and trackway, in an area of dense furze growth that reaches half a metre or more in height. That vegetation has made the boulder very difficult to relocate in the field; subsequent attempts to physically find the stone have not succeeded. Cup-and-ring art is generally thought to date to the Neolithic or early Bronze Age, though its precise meaning or function remains a matter of debate among archaeologists. What draws people to such carvings is partly the strangeness of finding deliberate, careful human marks in remote upland landscapes, with no obvious practical purpose and no surviving explanation.

The spot sits within an open heath with long views north and east across the Behy valley. The furze cover that obscures the boulder also makes approaching it on foot slow and awkward. Given that the stone has not been reliably located in recent years, anyone visiting the area should go in with realistic expectations: the setting itself, and the knowledge that something carved and ancient is out there somewhere in the vegetation, may be all that is on offer.