In 1978, during the routine removal of topsoil at a quarry on a north-facing slope at Glassamucky in the Dublin Mountains, two burials were uncovered, their existence entirely unknown until that moment of accidental exposure. It is the kind of discovery that serves as a reminder of how much the Irish landscape still holds beneath the surface, waiting for the wrong, or right, kind of disturbance.

One of the two burials was a crouched inhumation, meaning the body had been placed in a foetal position, a practice common in prehistoric funerary tradition. It was contained within a trapezoidal cist, a small stone-lined box grave constructed from upright slabs, and accompanied by a Food Vessel, a type of decorated ceramic pottery associated with early Bronze Age burial rites in Ireland and Britain. A radiocarbon date taken from the bone sample returned a result of 3,765 years before present, placing the burial firmly in the early Bronze Age, as recorded by Kelly in research published between 1987 and 1998. The site commands extensive views to the east, north, and west, a positioning that may or may not have been deliberate, though prominent, open locations were often favoured for burial during this period.

Glassamucky sits within the broader upland landscape of the Dublin Mountains, south-west of the city. The quarrying activity that uncovered the cist means the immediate burial context has long since been disturbed, and there is no monument visible to the casual visitor today. Those with an interest in the wider prehistoric landscape of the area will find it worth knowing that this slope sits within a zone of considerable early activity; the views it commands give some sense of why people chose this ground. Anyone exploring the Dublin uplands with an eye on the archaeological record should be prepared for exactly this kind of site, significant in what it revealed, modest in what now remains.