When pre-construction testing ahead of the motorway's route identified unusual concentrations of features in 2004, archaeologists set the area aside for fuller investigation. Excavations carried out in 2006 and 2007 uncovered something unexpectedly complete: a medieval working landscape compressed into a strip of ground measuring roughly 100 metres by 45 metres, containing an east-west road, five corn-drying kilns, a threshing floor, a well, a water-hole, and the corner of a house. Corn-drying kilns were a common feature of medieval Irish farming, typically shallow stone-lined chambers with a flue channel, used to dry harvested grain before it could be milled or stored. What made Phoenixtown unusual was the density of the complex and how intact the evidence remained.

The name Phoenixtown has nothing to do with the legendary bird. It derives from the Irish Baile na bhfionnóg, meaning town of the grey crow, anglicised over the centuries as Finnogestown before arriving at its current form. The barony of Lower Navan, in which the site sits, was granted by Hugh de Lacy to Jocelin de Angulo at the start of the Anglo-Norman settlement of Meath in 1172. The manor of Martry, which likely corresponded roughly to the medieval parish, passed through several hands before a royal inquisition in 1324 recorded the place-name Fenokston for the first time. Among the free tenants listed were David Beg, Adam Beg, and Richard Lewati, who together held a carucate of land, approximately 300 acres, at the settlement. These families are thought to have been the operators of the agricultural enterprise later uncovered by excavation. The ceramic evidence places most of the site's activity in the late twelfth to fourteenth centuries, with plough furrows representing the final phase of use.

One of the five kilns, designated Kiln D, produced some of the most precise dating evidence from the complex. It is a modest oval cut, just under 1.7 metres by 1.34 metres, with a stone base and the remnant of a flue extending northward. The chamber held a burning layer and charcoal deposit, and analysis of the charcoal identified oak and buckthorn as probable fuel sources. The crop residues preserved within included wheat, oats, barley, and peas. A radiocarbon date taken from the buckthorn returned a calibrated range of AD 1526 to 1793, which, if accurate, would make Kiln D the latest in the group, continuing in use well after the other features had fallen out of activity.