But this particular hollow in the ground at Portan, dated to somewhere between 2454 and 2203 BC, carries a quiet persistence that larger monuments rarely manage. It survived millennia of agricultural activity, the stripping of topsoil across a vast area, and the general indifference of the landscape to its own past.

The pit came to light during a programme of archaeological monitoring carried out intermittently between December 2015 and October 2018, led by P. Duffy, D. Bayle, and J. Whitaker. The monitoring covered around 92 hectares and identified 37 locations of potential archaeological interest across the Clonee, Portan, and Gunnocks areas of Meath. This pit, designated Site 26, was excavated under licence by D. Bayley and proved to contain three distinct layers of fill: a basal reddish-brown clay rich in charcoal, then a dark brown clay, and finally a brown to black silty clay with some stones. The lower two layers also held burnt bone, though not in quantities or forms that could be confidently identified. What the charcoal could tell was more precise: samples included ash, cherry, alder, and fruitwood, and a piece of alder yielded a radiocarbon date placing the pit firmly in the Early Bronze Age, that period in Ireland roughly spanning 2500 to 1500 BC when communities were beginning to work copper and bronze and leaving traces across the landscape in pits, burnt mounds, and simple burials. Whether this pit held a ritual deposit, the remnants of a small fire, or something more utilitarian is impossible to say. The burnt bone and the charcoal are suggestive but inconclusive, which is itself a kind of honesty about what the past tends to offer.