The lower limbs had been partially destroyed by the machinery, and the remaining exposed bone showed weathering, suggesting the grave had been disturbed and open to the elements for some time before anyone noticed. What might have passed as an unremarkable agricultural find became considerably more arresting once excavation began in earnest.

The skeleton was otherwise in good condition, and it told a specific story. Lodged inside the skull was a small, socketed iron arrowhead, the kind fitted onto a shaft by means of a hollow socket rather than a tang. It had pierced the bone and remained within the cranial cavity, recovered during the licensed excavation carried out under reference 11E0430. Whether the arrow was the cause of death or an earlier injury the man had survived cannot be determined from what was recovered, but the arrowhead's presence transforms the burial from an anonymous interment into something more pointed, literally and otherwise. Twenty-four metres to the north-east of the grave, the same quarry face had also sliced through a section of souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage of the kind commonly associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically used for storage or as a place of refuge. The two features were not necessarily connected, but their proximity in the same exposed quarry wall gives the site an unexpected density of history compressed into a short stretch of gravel.