The remains had been lying on a sloping deposit of silty, stony soil roughly sixty metres south of Cahermore, a cliff-edge fort perched above the shore, partly buried under storm beach material, large limestone blocks, and broken slabs of concrete that had been dumped there in more recent times. There was no grave cut, no formal structure of any kind. The excavator's impression was that the body had simply been laid directly onto the stony ground and covered with stones, which sets this burial apart from the more formally arranged interments that Irish archaeology more commonly turns up.

After the discovery was reported to the Gardaí and then to the National Museum of Ireland, an excavation took place on 17th January 2011 to record and recover what remained. The skeleton was that of a man, oriented on a northeast to southwest axis with his head to the southwest. The skull was almost entirely absent, as were the left arm and most of the legs, losses likely attributable to coastal erosion and storm activity over the years. Osteological analysis, the study of the physical structure and condition of bones, built a quietly detailed portrait of this individual. He was between thirty-five and forty-five years old at the time of his death, and stood around 170 centimetres tall. His teeth told a difficult story: calculus build-up, periodontitis, and evidence of dental enamel hypoplasia, a disruption to tooth development that can signal childhood illness or periods of inadequate nutrition. His left hip showed low-grade osteoarthritis, and his left shoulder blade carried an os acromiale lesion, a condition where a small bone segment fails to fuse properly, both consistent with a physically active life. Most striking, perhaps, was a periosteal reaction in the left ankle, an inflammatory response in the outer layer of bone, which may indicate either an old injury or an infectious disease that had not yet resolved at the time of his death.

The site sits within the broader landscape of Carrowhubbuck, where coastal erosion has long been gradually exposing and rearranging what lies beneath the surface. The proximity to Cahermore fort raises questions that the available evidence cannot yet answer, about whether this man's burial near an ancient promontory fortification was incidental or carried some significance now lost to time.