The configuration, a circle of deliberately dug pits enclosing a scorched focal point, belongs to a type of monument that archaeologists associate with ritual activity in prehistoric Ireland, though the precise meaning of such sites remains a matter of careful inference rather than certainty.

The site came to light through excavation in 2001, carried out under licence. What the pits contained gives the place its particular character: charcoal, human bone, and animal bone, with the central burnt area yielding crushed and burnt bone as well. The combination of human remains, animal remains, and burning in a structured spatial arrangement suggests this was a place where the boundary between the living and the dead was actively negotiated, though by whom, and in what period, the available evidence does not precisely resolve. A number of worked flint tools were also recovered, flint having been shaped and used by people across a very long span of Irish prehistory, from the Mesolithic through to the Bronze Age. The excavation findings were published by Clutterbuck in 2003.