The evidence is not structural; there are no walls or enclosures to speak of. Instead, it comes in the form of a lithic scatter, meaning a spread of worked stone and the waste left over from making it, distributed across four distinct concentrations at the Carrickmines site. One trench alone, designated T4 in the southern part of the site, yielded 772 individual pieces of flint. The sheer density of that single concentration, in a part of the site that saw relatively little later disturbance, suggests that something sustained and repeated was happening there.

Excavations carried out under licences 00E0525 and 02E1532, the findings of which were reported by T. Breen in 2012 as part of the M50 South-eastern Motorway Scheme, found that the material spans an extraordinary range of time. Both the early and late Mesolithic periods are represented, along with a substantial Neolithic presence, particularly scrapers, which were likely used for processing animal hides into leather. A petit-tranchet derivative arrowhead, a later Neolithic type, was recovered, as were barbed and tanged arrowheads that extend into the Early Bronze Age. Most of the raw material appears to have been beach pebble flint brought inland from the coast, and the predominance of knapping debris confirms that tools were being made on the spot rather than brought in finished. Two of the four flint concentrations fell in areas that later became the most heavily built-up parts of the medieval and post-medieval site. Breen suggests this is not coincidental; a slightly raised, dry area beside marshy ground and streams would have been just as attractive to prehistoric settlers as it later proved to medieval ones.

The Carrickmines site is not publicly accessible in any conventional sense; it was excavated ahead of road construction and the ground has since been substantially altered. The value here is archival rather than ambulatory. Breen's four-volume report, prepared for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, is the primary record, and the distribution map of the lithic scatter reproduced in Volume 4 gives a clearer sense of the spatial patterning than any surface visit could now provide. For those interested in how prehistoric activity is read from apparently blank ground, the Carrickmines assemblage is a useful case study in what survives when buildings do not.