Human bones first came to light in April 2003, washing out of an eroding cliff face in a way that blurred the line between archaeological discovery and crime scene. The Gardaí attended, removed most of the remains, and only afterwards did the National Museum step in to investigate what the sea was gradually reclaiming.

What the excavation revealed was fragmentary but telling. The bones lay concentrated within an area roughly a metre wide, at a depth of between 36 and 54 centimetres below the top of the cliff, sealed beneath a naturally-occurring layer of water-rolled cobbles. The burial appeared to represent a single individual, interred rather than cremated, though the deposit had been entirely disturbed by the time it was examined. No formal grave structure was identified around or beneath the remains. A corroded iron object was reportedly found among the bones by the Gardaí, though it was not retained, leaving its nature and significance permanently unresolved. When Museum staff extended their search, they found a second, smaller cluster of bones approximately four metres to the south-east. Whether these represent material displaced from the first burial by coastal erosion, or the remains of an entirely separate individual, remains an open question documented by Cahill and Sikora in 2011. The site sits quietly in that uncertain territory between the individual and the anonymous, the recoverable and the already lost.