The pit itself is barely the width of a dinner plate, roughly 44 by 41 centimetres across and only 7 centimetres deep at the time of discovery, and even that modest depth had been reduced by the time archaeologists reached it. The upper portion had already been stripped away by groundwork machinery before the burial was recognised for what it was.

The find came to light during archaeological monitoring carried out in advance of construction on the N22 Ballincollig Bypass, in the townland of Barnagore, County Cork. Monitoring of this kind involves archaeologists watching as topsoil is mechanically removed, precisely so that features like this one are not lost entirely. Inside the surviving portion of the pit, excavators found a small quantity of cremated bone, poorly preserved, along with 22 sherds of pottery identified as belonging to the bowl tradition of the Early Bronze Age. Bowl tradition vessels are among the earliest ceramic forms associated with funerary practice in Ireland, simple round-bottomed pots placed with the dead as grave goods or containers. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal from the pit returned a date range of 2300 to 2040 BC, placing the burial firmly in the earlier part of the Early Bronze Age. Around 100 metres to the south-west, a separate pit containing Bronze Age pottery sherds but no cremated bone was also recorded, hinting that this small corner of north Cork was used in ways that went beyond a single isolated act of burial.