Without that infrastructural work cutting through level pasture on a gentle south-easterly slope at Shanaclogh, the ring-ditch and its cremation pits might have remained entirely unknown, their existence undetectable from the surface above.

In 1986, archaeologist Margaret Gowen identified the site, recorded as Site 2/38/3, during monitoring of topsoil stripping associated with the Irish Gas pipeline. What her excavations revealed was a horseshoe-shaped ring-ditch, a type of enclosing earthwork commonly associated with Bronze Age burial practice, cutting around a central area measuring roughly 5.80 metres by 4.20 metres. The ditch opened to the west, ending in two rounded terminals with a gap of about three metres between them. It had been truncated, meaning later activity or natural erosion had cut into and reduced parts of it, particularly on the west and south sides, leaving it between 30 and 50 centimetres deep and no more than 1.30 metres wide. Within the enclosed space, six cremation pits were arranged roughly in the centre. The largest was 80 by 90 centimetres; others were considerably smaller, the most modest just 20 to 24 centimetres across. The upper fill of the ditch itself contained large stones, concentrations of cremated bone, and a fragment amounting to roughly one quarter of a ceramic pot. No other artefacts were recovered. Where the human remains could be identified, each pit appeared to hold the bones of a single individual, suggesting a burial ground used on several separate occasions rather than a single communal deposit. One small pit contained no discernible bone and may have held a timber post rather than human remains.

By the time the Archaeological Survey of Ireland visited in 2000, nothing remained visible above ground. The site sits in ordinary farmland, and there is no monument to mark it. For anyone interested in how much archaeological material lies beneath Irish fields without any surface indication, Shanaclogh offers a useful, if invisible, case in point. The excavation record is accessible through the excavations.ie database under the 1986 entry, Site No. 58, which gives the fullest account of what was found during those few weeks of pipeline monitoring.