The grave, known as a cist, is a type of prehistoric burial common in Bronze Age Ireland: a tight rectangular chamber assembled from carefully placed stone slabs, sealed with a capstone, and designed to hold the dead in a compressed, deliberate space. This one measures less than a metre in length internally and just over half a metre in width, intimate almost to the point of being unsettling.

It came to light not through excavation but through accident. In 1971, bulldozing in an area already given over to quarrying disturbed what appears to have been a cairn, a mound of stones probably raised over the burials. Five cists in total were uncovered together, of which this is one. Inside were two bipartite vases, ceramic vessels divided into distinct sections, a form associated with Early Bronze Age funerary practice in Ireland. The cremated bones of the adult and juvenile were found within one of them. A miniature vase was recovered as well, an object whose precise purpose is debated but which appears frequently in Bronze Age burial contexts, perhaps a symbolic vessel or an offering. The long axis of the cist was aligned almost exactly north to south, mirroring the ridge on which it sat, a placement that may or may not have been deliberate but feels hard to dismiss as coincidence when you consider how carefully the chamber itself was constructed.