Somewhere in the townland of Bishopstown in County Waterford, a Bronze Age grave was opened twice: once around 1930, apparently without proper record, and then again in 1938, when archaeologists found that the stone cist itself had already been destroyed. A cist is a small box-like burial chamber, typically formed from flat slabs of stone, used throughout Bronze Age Ireland to contain the dead. By the time anyone with a scholarly interest arrived, the structure was gone. What survived were three ceramic food vessels and the cremated remains of three individuals, recovered from the disturbed earth.

Food vessels are among the more intriguing objects to emerge from Bronze Age burials in Ireland. Typically small, hand-built ceramic pots, they are found placed beside the dead, and while their precise ritual function remains a matter of debate, the name reflects the longstanding assumption that they were intended to accompany the deceased with provisions. Finding three vessels alongside three sets of cremated remains at Bishopstown suggests a burial that was either communal or accumulated over time, though the destruction of the cist itself makes it impossible to say much more with certainty. The site was documented by Seán P. Ó Ríordáin, who published an account in 1939, and it has since been referenced in John Waddell's broader survey of Irish Bronze Age cists and in the joint catalogue of Irish Bronze Age funerary ceramics that Waddell and Breandán Ó Ríordáin compiled in 1993. It is one of a considerable number of such burial finds from Waterford, most of them discovered incidentally during agricultural or construction work rather than through planned excavation.