The careful arrangement of these objects suggests something deliberate, some gesture of attention toward the dead, though what exactly was intended remains unknown. The burial lies on a terrace on the north-eastern side of the Bailey Mór mound, a raised earthwork that would have dominated this small Atlantic island.

The grave was uncovered in 1946 by the French art historian and archaeologist Françoise Henry, who was excavating an area to the north of two early medieval house sites on the island. Henry never published the results of this excavation, and the details survived only in her personal archive of papers. It was a researcher named Greene who, in a 2009 doctoral thesis on settlement and identity along the Atlantic fringe of north-west Mayo between roughly AD 400 and 1100, drew out the specifics. The body had been laid out in an extended inhumation, arms straight at the sides, and the grave itself had been cut into an occupation layer of grey sand. That layer contained sherds of souterrain ware, a type of coarse handmade pottery associated with early medieval Ireland and often found in the underground stone passages known as souterrains, which were used for storage or refuge. Beneath the sand lay an area of cobbling, suggesting the spot had seen human activity before the burial. The grave was shallow enough, and the body positioned in such a way, that those who later examined the archive believed no coffin was used; the person may instead have been wrapped in a shroud.