Nothing on the surface, no headstones, no mounded earth, no trace, gave any indication that the ground below held the dead. It was only when archaeological test trenching was carried out, in advance of a proposed road realignment along the Killorglin to Killarney road, that the extent of what lay beneath became clear.

The excavation, recorded by Dennehy in 2002, focused on an area immediately south of the doorway of Killalee church. Eighteen potential grave-cuts were identified in the disturbed ground, and from these, two adult and two neo-natal skeletons were formally excavated. Neo-natal burials, those of newborns, are not uncommon in early Irish ecclesiastical sites and are often associated with unbaptised infants interred near church boundaries, though the precise circumstances here are not recorded. Equally striking were two cremation pits discovered just to the east of the church. Cremation and inhumation existing in close proximity at the same site points to a potentially long and layered history of burial practice at this location, spanning periods with quite different attitudes to how the dead should be treated.

The graveyard sits in pasture to the north of the main road, its presence now documented even if nothing visible marks it out on the ground. The church itself, Killalee, still stands nearby as a reference point, though the burial ground that quietly surrounds it offers no surface clues to what archaeologists found just below the sod.