In 2004, someone digging in their garden near the Ballymoat stream in County Waterford turned up a small stone-lined grave that had been quietly waiting just twenty centimetres below the surface for roughly four thousand years. What they had found was a cist, a type of prehistoric burial box constructed from upright stone slabs and flat stones laid in courses, sealed at the top with a single capstone and paved across the floor with five carefully placed stones. The whole internal space measured less than a metre east to west and less than half a metre north to south, yet it had been sufficient to hold the remains of two people and a ceramic vessel.

Once excavated, the cist revealed cremated bone belonging to two adults, one of whom was identified as male, along with an upright ribbed bowl placed inside the chamber. Radiocarbon dating of the bone returned a calibrated date of between 2190 and 1920 BC, placing the burial firmly in the Early Bronze Age, a period when cremation and cist burial were widespread practices across Ireland. The location itself is notable: the cist had been set at the crest of a west-facing slope on a spur of high ground overlooking the Ballymoat stream valley, a position that may well have been chosen deliberately. It may also have had some relationship to a separate, as yet unlocated, Bronze Age burial known to exist in the same general area, though the precise connection between the two remains unclear. The find was reported to the National Museum of Ireland and subsequently excavated and published by M. Cahill and M. Sikora.