A burial pit containing four people, all interred at the same moment, turned up a metre below the surface of a building site in Naas East in May 1972. Workers preparing the ground for a new house initially assumed the remains were those of an animal. They were not. Once reported to the National Museum of Ireland, the archaeologist Joseph Raftery investigated on 21st May 1972 and identified a pit burial holding four inhumations, arranged head-to-toe, with the upper bodies placed on top of the lower ones but oriented in opposite directions. That deliberate, interlocking arrangement is a strong indicator that all four were buried simultaneously, most likely as the result of a single event. The location itself carries a resonance: the site sits within an area historically known as Gallow's Glen, a name recorded in association with a natural esker, which is a long ridge of gravel and sand deposited by a glacial meltwater stream, at Naas East.

The four individuals have since been re-examined as part of a National Museum of Ireland project. The reassessment identified them as a male aged between 35 and 44, a juvenile aged between 8 and 14, an adolescent male aged between 14 and 17, and a young adult male. No objects of any kind were recovered alongside the remains, which makes precise dating difficult, though the remains are considered to be of historical or archaeological origin. The absence of grave goods and the nature of the burial, a single simultaneous interment of individuals spanning a wide age range, raises questions that the physical evidence alone cannot yet answer. In May 2020, archaeological testing at the neighbouring site to the south, at a property on the Dublin Road called Dalemount, uncovered further clusters of disarticulated human bone scattered across the eastern part of the site. Forensic archaeologist Dr Clare Mullins confirmed the disarticulated character of those remains, which were found in a spread of soil fill rather than in any clearly defined pit or grave. Whether the 2020 material is directly related to the 1972 burial pit to the north remains uncertain, but the proximity is difficult to set aside entirely.