At Baysrath in County Kilkenny, the groundwork for the N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford Road Improvement Scheme did exactly that, uncovering the remains of four circular structures that appear to date from the earliest decades of the common era. What made the find particularly striking was not any single building but the concentration of activity across roughly 1.8 hectares, where evidence of human occupation stretched from the Late Neolithic all the way through to the early medieval period.

The structures themselves were post-built and circular, a common form for domestic buildings in Iron Age Ireland, with external diameters ranging from about 6.35 to 9.8 metres. They sat along the north-eastern portion of a palisaded enclosure, a boundary made from upright timbers set into the ground, and they represent at least three separate phases of construction and replacement, meaning the site was used, abandoned or modified, and then reused over an extended period. The excavators noted that the buildings were probably not substantial; the post arrangements suggest they may have been relatively light, tent-like structures rather than the heavier roundhouses more commonly associated with the period. Radiocarbon dating of material from the site produced calibrated dates ranging from around Cal AD 25 to 128 and Cal AD 60 to 131, placing the occupation firmly within the first and early second centuries. The excavation, carried out under licence in 2006 and 2007, was directed ahead of the road scheme and documented by Channing in subsequent publications from 2009 and 2010.