What they contained, however, pushed the story of human settlement in this corner of Ireland back to the very earliest chapter of the farming era.

The pits came to light during excavation work along the N11 corridor, carried out by archaeologist Yvonne Whitty. From them came 31 sherds of Carinated Bowl pottery, a distinctive early Neolithic ceramic type characterised by its angled, shoulder-like profile and relatively fine fabric. Carinated Bowl is among the earliest pottery traditions associated with farming communities in Ireland and Britain, typically placed in the centuries around 4000 BC or earlier. The presence of these sherds in three adjacent pits at Cranagh dated the deposit firmly to the early Neolithic period, making this a rare and quiet trace of the island's first agricultural communities, preserved by accident beneath what would become a busy national route.