Whether the remains represent a deliberate burial or were carried in accidentally with the fill material is a question that cannot now be answered, and that ambiguity is part of what makes the discovery quietly unsettling.

The excavation, carried out by Cóilín Ó Drisceoil, revealed that the ground beneath these Georgian-era buildings had a complicated past. The site sits on the flood-plain of the River Nore, and before it could be built upon or cultivated, it had to be reclaimed through a series of deliberate efforts to raise and stabilise the waterlogged ground. That process was probably completed sometime in the thirteenth century, after which the area functioned as a rear garden behind whatever structures fronted the street. The garden was not simply a quiet green space; evidence of iron smelting was also found there, suggesting it served various practical purposes. At some point during this medieval phase of use, the infant's skull fragments entered the gravel make-up, either placed there by someone or introduced without intention. The bones were found well below the cellar floor level of the later buildings, meaning that by the time those houses went up, all memory of what lay beneath had long since vanished.