These are cists, box-like graves built from upright slabs and typically covered with a capstone or lintel, used during the Bronze Age to inter the dead, sometimes with cremated remains and small personal objects. What makes the pair at Leean unusual is their position and condition: one, on the south-western perimeter of the quarry, lies open, its covering gone or never replaced; the other, on the eastern perimeter, still has its lintel in place, giving it a more intact, almost sealed quality.

The quarry itself is tied directly to the megalithic tomb nearby, suggesting that when the larger monument was being built, stone was extracted from this spot and shaped for its construction. The cists appear to have been placed at the margins of that same quarry, which raises the kind of questions that prehistoric sites often leave unanswered: were they positioned deliberately in relation to the tomb, or do they simply reflect the continued use of a place already understood as significant? The proximity of burial to the source of monumental stone is not unique in Irish prehistory, but it is rarely so clearly laid out in the landscape.