What makes the site quietly arresting is not just its age but the particular combination of domestic and possibly ceremonial features that turned up together, suggesting a place where the practical and the ritual once occupied the same ground.

In 2000, archaeologist Donald Murphy led an excavation that brought much of this to light. The dig uncovered five corn-drying kilns, the kind of stone-lined or pit-cut structures used in early medieval Ireland to dry harvested grain before it could be stored or milled, a necessity in a damp climate where wet grain would spoil quickly. Three of the five kilns were clustered in the north-east quadrant of the site. Alongside them, fifty-five pits were scattered across the whole excavated area, the majority showing flecks of charcoal in their fill, a sign of burning activity that is common on early settlement sites but not always easy to interpret. Eleven linear features, essentially ditches or cut lines running through the ground, were also recorded, and five of these may have formed some kind of ritual enclosure. A charcoal sample taken from one of those linear features was radiocarbon dated to between AD 261 and 428, placing at least part of the site's activity in the late Roman period in Britain, though Ireland itself was never under Roman rule. The broader character of the settlement features is described as mainly Early Christian in date, suggesting the site continued in use well into the early medieval centuries before eventually being abandoned.