No grave-cut had been dug, no deliberate interment arranged. The remains, belonging to at least one adult and possibly a younger individual as well, were simply present within the inner enclosure of Dún Aonghasa, on the great clifftop fort of Inis Mór in the Aran Islands.

What makes the find quietly unsettling is the radiocarbon date obtained from the forearm bones: somewhere between 170 cal. BC and cal. AD 60, placing the deposit firmly in the early Iron Age. Dún Aonghasa had long been understood as a monument with deep prehistoric roots, but tangible, dateable evidence of activity inside the fort during this period was scarce. The fragmentary and disarticulated state of the remains, with no associated grave, raises questions that the excavation could not fully answer. Were these bones moved, disturbed by later activity, or deposited in circumstances that had nothing to do with formal burial practice? The analysis, published by Cotter in 2012 and incorporating skeletal work by Ó Donnabháin, could confirm the date and the anatomy but not the story behind them.