The pin, catalogued but unillustrated, came from a kitchen midden, the term used for the accumulated rubbish heaps that formed beside old dwellings, layer upon layer of shells, bones, ash, and household waste, and which can preserve extraordinary small objects simply because they were thrown away alongside everything else.

The geologist George Henry Kinahan recorded the site in 1869, noting that the midden lay to the north of an associated dwelling and measured roughly 11 metres long, just over 8 metres wide, and about 0.9 metres high. Those are not negligible dimensions; a mound of that size represents a considerable depth of occupation and disposal, the slow accumulation of daily life. Kinahan recorded the brass pin as having been found within it, but included no drawing or further description of the object, leaving its date, form, and purpose open to speculation. Whether it was a simple dress fastener or something more elaborate cannot now be established from what he left behind.

Nothing of the midden is visible at ground level today, and no surface trace has been recorded since Kinahan's time. The dwelling it once adjoined survives in the archaeological record, but the rubbish heap that might have illuminated the lives of its occupants has long since settled back into the land, taking the context of that single small brass pin with it.