Somewhere beneath a housing plot in County Kildare, the dead went unreported for years. Near the edge of a sandpit at Newtownmacabe, a prehistoric burial came to light in 1971, only to be destroyed before anyone could properly examine it where it lay. What survived the disturbance was enough to piece together at least part of the picture: a small stone-lined grave, known as a cist, rectangular in shape, with a capstone on top and a floor of small flagstones beneath, oriented on a northwest to southeast axis. Inside lay the skeleton of a middle-aged male, his skull placed at the northwest end, accompanied by a Bowl Food Vessel, a type of ceramic jar associated with Bronze Age funerary practice in Ireland and Britain. A second skull, belonging to a young adult female, was also recovered from the area, though whether it originally belonged to the same cist or represented a separate burial altogether could not be established.

The 1971 find, documented by Raftery, was not the first time human remains had turned up in this vicinity. Other burials had apparently been discovered in the area over the years, quietly absorbed back into the ground or quietly disposed of, without the relevant authorities ever being informed. It is the kind of accumulation that points to a site of some significance in prehistory, one used repeatedly across time, with the full extent of its use now effectively unknowable. Today, three houses stand on or immediately beside the ground where the monument once existed, making formal investigation of whatever may remain a near impossibility.