What came to light was a burnt mound, a type of prehistoric site found in considerable numbers across Ireland and Britain. The basic idea behind these monuments is straightforward enough: stones were heated in fire and dropped into water-filled troughs to bring the liquid to a boil, probably for cooking, bathing, or some form of industrial process. Over time, the discarded, heat-shattered stones piled up into low mounds, dark and ashy, and then the site was forgotten entirely.

This particular example was excavated by archaeologist Yvonne Whitty during work on the N11 road improvement scheme. Beneath the spread of burnt material, she found a trough, two gullies, and two pits. The trough was sealed by the mound, suggesting it was in use during the same period of activity that produced the burnt stone accumulation. The two pits were associated with the feature but lay outside the sealed area. A single retouched flint flake, a small worked stone tool trimmed along its edge, was recovered from the site and provided the key chronological indicator, placing the activity firmly in the Bronze Age, broadly the period from around 2500 to 500 BC in Irish terms. It is a modest piece of evidence, but flint working of this kind is well-recognised as characteristic of the period, and burnt mounds as a class are overwhelmingly Bronze Age in date across the island.