The pit itself was modest to the point of near-invisibility: roughly subcircular, measuring only 0.4 metres by 0.3 metres, and less than a tenth of a metre deep. It would have been easy to miss entirely, and indeed it was partially destroyed by topsoil stripping before anyone had a chance to properly examine it. That it was noticed at all is down to the archaeological monitoring that accompanied construction of the N22 Ballincollig Bypass.

What the excavators found inside was a black, charcoal-stained fill containing three sherds of prehistoric pottery and fragments of cremated human bone belonging to at least one adult male. Radiocarbon dating of the charcoal placed the burial somewhere between 1750 and 1490 BC, placing it firmly in the Middle Bronze Age, a period when cremation was a common funerary practice across Ireland and Britain. Two possible stake-holes in the northeast quadrant of the pit hint at some kind of simple marker or covering, though their precise function is uncertain. Roughly 150 metres to the north-north-east lay a fulacht fiadh, a type of ancient cooking site typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stones beside a trough or pit, and one of the most frequently encountered prehistoric monument types in Ireland. Whether the burial and the cooking site were used by the same community, or simply shared a landscape over overlapping generations, cannot be said with confidence, but their proximity is quietly suggestive of a place that people returned to.