The cremation pit at Hermitage, just downstream from Castleconnell village in County Limerick, was not found through any planned investigation of the site. It came to light in 2001 only because a sewerage scheme was being laid through the area, and an archaeological assessment was required before the groundworks could proceed.

Archaeologist Sarah McCutcheon carried out the initial test-trenching in 2001 under licence No. 01E0319, within the way-leave corridor for the Castleconnell Rising Main. What she found prompted a fuller excavation by Ægis Archaeology across roughly 4,400 square metres, divided into four areas. The burial pit, recorded as feature C5 in Area A, was subcircular in shape, measuring 0.5m east to west, 0.6m north to south, and 0.4m deep. At its centre sat a large stone axe, placed blade-downwards, which had once rested against a wooden post driven into the base before the cremated remains were deposited. The post, estimated at around 0.20m in diameter, appears to have projected above ground level, probably serving as a grave-marker. The cremated bone, 1,979g of it, had been arranged in a crescent shape around the post and represented an adult individual, possibly male. A patch of heat-reddened boulder clay nearby is thought to be the remnant of the funerary pyre itself. Radiocarbon dating of a bone fragment placed the burial in the Early Mesolithic period, between 7530 and 7320 BC, making it the earliest identified burial in Ireland. The axe showed signs of burning, suggesting it had been placed on the pyre before interment. The wider excavation also uncovered a second cremation pit roughly 100m away, dated to between 7090 and 7030 BC, along with post-holes, the traces of several small huts, a fulacht fiadh (a type of prehistoric cooking site associated with heat-shattered stone and water-filled troughs), and 71 fragments of worked flint and 116 of chert recovered from the spoil-heaps.

The site sits in pasture at the base of the valley and carries no visible surface trace whatsoever; aerial photography shows nothing. It does not appear on Ordnance Survey historic mapping. A potential ancient fording point on the Shannon lies roughly 100m to the north-east, which may explain why this bend in the river held such significance for Mesolithic communities. There is nothing to see at the ground level today, and access is across private farmland, so this is a place best understood through the published excavation reports rather than a visit. The finds, including the stone axe, are the tangible legacy of what was uncovered here.