The site sits on a prominent esker, one of the long, winding ridges of gravel and sand deposited by glacial meltwater, and it was the quarrying of this feature that first brought human remains to light in 1969. Further burials were identified in 1975, all of them inhumations, meaning the bodies had been placed in the ground rather than cremated, though the context was heavily disturbed by the time any careful examination could take place.

What the investigations revealed was fragmentary but telling. One shallow pit contained a partly articulated skeleton, its alignment running roughly west-northwest to east-southeast. A small circular mound visible on the quarry surface initially suggested something of archaeological significance, perhaps a burial monument of some kind, but it proved on examination to be a modern landscape feature, its material incorporating disarticulated bones that had been displaced from the surrounding graves rather than deliberately placed. The mound, in other words, was incidental rather than intentional, a consequence of disturbance rather than evidence of ceremony. Further testing carried out in 2005 failed to uncover anything of additional archaeological interest in the wider area, leaving the earlier finds as the main record of whatever use this elevated ground once served. The name Gallowshill adds its own quiet suggestion to the picture, though the burials themselves offer no firm confirmation of what that name might preserve.