It came to light only because a road was coming through, and what it suggests about the people who once worked here is quietly compelling.

The site at Danesfort was excavated in 2007 ahead of improvements to the N9/N10 road corridor between Kilcullen and Waterford. The excavation, carried out under licence E3616 and reported by Jennings in 2009 and 2010, uncovered a rectangular trough measuring roughly two metres by one and a half metres and just under two thirds of a metre deep, set in a valley above a small stream. Around it were associated pits, post-holes arranged in lines, and a furnace, the combination pointing to a possible metalworking area, though the precise nature of the work remains uncertain. What made the discovery stranger still was the immediate setting: elements of a flat cemetery, a type of burial ground without visible mounding or monument above ground, were identified both to the north and south of the working area. The proximity of the dead to what appears to have been a place of industrial activity raises questions that the excavation record alone cannot fully answer, about the relationship between craft, community, and burial in this particular corner of the landscape.