The lithic scatter at Ardanairy is described as very extensive, spreading across several fields, and the artefacts it contains span an extraordinary range of time, from the Later Mesolithic period, roughly eight or nine thousand years ago, through to the Bronze Age. That kind of chronological depth in a single location suggests not a single episode of occupation but repeated return, generation after generation finding the same headland useful or significant.

The scatter was identified during fieldwalking in 1983, a method of systematic ground survey in which archaeologists walk ploughed or disturbed fields in lines, collecting and recording surface finds. The work drew on the expertise of Professor P. Woodman, a leading authority on Irish Mesolithic archaeology, and the site is referenced in both Mitchell's 1990 study and Stout's 1994 work on the archaeology of Wicklow. Close by, there is also the trace of a fulacht fiadh, a type of prehistoric cooking site typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and fire-cracked stone beside a trough or pit, which at Ardanairy has been largely destroyed by ploughing. The two features together point to a landscape that was genuinely well used across prehistoric time, not merely passed through.