Small in number and modest in appearance, these worked stones represent a lithic scatter, the term archaeologists use for concentrations of stone tool debris left behind by prehistoric people going about the practical business of making and using flint implements. Nothing was built here, no monument raised, no grave dug that we know of. Just the quiet remnants of toolmaking, preserved by accident in the soil.

The finds came to light in 1999 during monitoring of topsoil-stripping carried out ahead of construction work on a complex of playing pitches. Archaeological monitoring of groundworks, now a standard requirement on development sites in Ireland, means that a trained observer watches as machinery removes the upper layers of soil, ready to flag anything of significance before it is destroyed. In this case, the vigilance paid off. All 24 pieces of struck flint were identified as having been worked from water-rolled pebbles, the kind of smooth, rounded stones that would have been collected from a beach or riverbed. The assemblage included cores, which are the parent pieces of flint from which flakes are struck, and the waste flakes produced during that process. The details are recorded in Doyle's 2000 report and were compiled for the Irish heritage record by Geraldine Stout in 2011.

Robswalls lies in the Malahide area on the north Dublin coast, a stretch of shoreline where water-rolled flint pebbles would have been readily available to prehistoric inhabitants working with the materials closest to hand. The site itself is not signposted or accessible as a heritage location; the playing pitches occupy the ground and there is nothing visible above the surface. The significance of Robswalls is entirely below the threshold of the visible, which is in some ways the point. Lithic scatters like this one rarely survive development intact, and this small assemblage survives only because someone was present and paying attention at exactly the right moment.