A tenant, digging along the northern periphery of an inner vallum, the earthen bank forming part of a defensive or enclosing structure, found human bones scattered just below the surface, apparently uncalcined, meaning they had not been burnt before burial or deposition. Mixed in with them were animal teeth and quantities of shellfish remains, with oyster shells making up the bulk of the material.

The find was recorded by the antiquarian W.G. Wood-Martin, writing in 1887 to 1888, but it resisted easy interpretation even then. The bones and shells appeared together without the clear markers of either a formal burial or a midden, the term for a refuse heap of food waste and discarded material common to prehistoric and early historic settlements. Wood-Martin noted there was no firm evidence for either category, which left the deposit in an uncomfortable middle ground. Whether the human remains had been placed deliberately, disturbed from somewhere else, or simply accumulated alongside domestic waste in ways that no longer made sense to a Victorian observer, the site declined to say. The views from the rise take in Knocknarea to the north, the hill above Strandhill where the great cairn of Maeve sits, a landscape dense with prehistoric activity that makes the ambiguity of this quieter spot feel less surprising.