Workers digging for sand at a townland called Clashmore broke through into a series of cist graves, a type of burial where the body is laid within a box-like arrangement of stone slabs, though in this case some of the dead had no such protection at all and lay simply in the earth. The disturbance prompted a rescue excavation, carried out on behalf of the National Museum of Ireland, and what emerged was a small but striking cemetery of at least eight individuals, each one laid out in the same careful, consistent manner.

The excavation findings were recorded by O'Kelly in 1944 and the site had earlier been noted by Raftery in 1941. All the burials were extended inhumations, meaning the bodies were laid flat and at full length rather than crouched, and every one of them was oriented east to west with the head placed to the west. This kind of deliberate alignment is associated both with Early Christian burial practice and with certain Iron Age traditions in Ireland, and the excavators were unable to settle firmly on one period or the other, suggesting the graves belong somewhere in the range of the Early Iron Age or Early Christian period. No grave goods were found with the bodies themselves, which makes precise dating difficult. A quern stone, the kind of rotary grinding stone used for processing grain, was recovered nearby, though whether it was connected to the burials or simply part of the wider landscape is unclear. Some burials had already been disturbed or removed before archaeologists arrived, and others were deliberately left unexcavated.

The site sits in Knockainy West, a townland in south County Limerick, close to the hill of Knockainy, Cnoc Áine, which has its own long mythological associations in Irish tradition. There is nothing visible above ground to mark the graves today, and access to the precise location requires some research beforehand. The record compiled by Caimin O'Brien for the national monuments archive provides the clearest reference point for those trying to locate it. For anyone drawn to the quieter corners of Irish archaeology, the interest here lies less in what can be seen and more in what the find represents: a small community of people, laid out with evident intention, whose identity and exact era remain genuinely unresolved.