When archaeologists carried out test trenching on a patch of pasture immediately east of Killalee church in County Kerry, they found two cremation pits lying close together in the soil, the kind of feature that can sit undetected for centuries beneath ordinary farmland.

Cremation pits are among the more direct traces left by prehistoric funerary practice: a pit into which cremated human bone, and sometimes grave goods, was deposited, either loosely or within a container. The two pits at Killalee had both been cut through by a plough furrow at some point in the field's agricultural history, leaving them heavily truncated. The westernmost of the pair survived in better condition than the other, though even it was excavated in section only, meaning archaeologists examined a vertical slice through the feature rather than opening it fully. The work was reported by Dennehy in 2002.