What they unearthed was a Bronze Age cist burial, a type of grave in which cremated remains are placed within a small stone-lined pit or box, here so rudimentary that scholars have argued ever since about whether it qualifies as a cist at all. The workmen had already done considerable damage before any proper investigation could take place, which means that much of what we know about the burial comes from the objects recovered rather than from the structure itself.

The grave contained an Encrusted Urn, a style of pottery characteristic of the Irish Middle Bronze Age, inverted over cremated remains on a small flagstone. Encrusted Urns take their name from the applied decoration that covers their surfaces, and the vessel from Kilbarry is a particularly elaborate example. Writing in 1973, Kavanagh described it in careful detail: a bevelled rim with criss-cross hatching, internal decoration arranged in two tiers of alternating oblique lines, and an exterior covered with hollow impressions, herring-bone patterns, small hollow discs separated by applied ribs, and indented cordons running around the maximum diameter of the vessel, with further applied oblique ribs continuing below. The overall effect is one of dense, layered ornament. Alongside the urn, a quartz crystal was found associated with the burial. Quartz appears regularly in prehistoric Irish burial contexts, and while its precise significance remains debated, it was clearly not accidental. As for the structure around the remains, Power, writing in 1933, described a rough arrangement of kerbstones no more than seven inches high and laid on edge; Waddell, reassessing it decades later, thought it more likely a simple pit protected by a few stones. The site itself has also caused bibliographic confusion: both Kavanagh and Doody incorrectly placed it in a Kilbarry townland on Cork Ordnance Survey sheet 36, an error that subsequent researchers have had to navigate.