When ground was broken during a residential project by Cairn Homes, archaeologists uncovered a cremation pit, the carefully layered remains of an ancient funerary rite preserved in the soil for an unknown stretch of centuries. What makes the find quietly arresting is the detail of its survival: two distinct fills within a single pit, one dense with charcoal and large burnt bone fragments, the other a lighter deposit placed on top, apparently to seal the cremation below.

The discovery did not come entirely out of nowhere. A geophysical survey carried out by Joanna Leigh in 2015 had already flagged something worth investigating in the southwest corner of the proposed development. The gradiometer survey, a technique that detects subtle variations in the magnetic properties of buried features, identified two circular ditch-type responses roughly 11.25 metres and 12.25 metres in diameter, with both appearing to sit within a larger, less well-defined enclosure. Curving crop marks visible from the surface corresponded closely with these underground readings. Testing followed in 2017, led by Rob Lynch and Enda Lydon of IAC Archaeology, which identified three distinct areas of archaeological interest. When Muireann Ní Cheallacháin led the full excavation of one of these areas in 2020, the cremation pit designated C602 was found in the northern part of the site. Its lower fill appeared to be a direct deposit from a funeral pyre; dense concentrations of charcoal and burnt bone suggest the remains were placed here shortly after burning. Nearby features included a second pit roughly two metres to the east, a further circular pit about 10.6 metres to the southeast, and what may have been two postholes to the south, one of which retained stones along its edges that may originally have served as packing material. Together, these scattered features suggest that this was not an isolated act but part of a broader pattern of activity at this location, though the full nature and date of that activity remain unclear.