His front incisors had been worn down to smooth, rounded stumps, not by decay or diet, but by years of pulling a narrow strip of soft material, something finer than leather, between his clenched teeth with a jerking motion of the neck, hand, and elbow. The wear pattern suggested he used his left hand, and that the action involved a degree of rotational force repeated habitually over the course of years. Whoever he was, he was not a man of leisure; his skeleton also showed damage consistent with heavy lifting and sustained physical labour, and his diet had been poor. The researchers who analysed his remains concluded that he was probably engaged in a specialised trade, though which trade exactly, the bones cannot say.

The grave itself was found in 1988 by the landowner on undulating pasture at the south-eastern foot of a low hill in Ballykeel, with a south-westward-flowing stream close by. Archaeologist Mary Cahill conducted a rescue excavation, and the burial was subsequently re-covered with earth. What had been uncovered was a stone cist, a type of burial in which a body is enclosed within a box-like structure of flat slabs, this one built from large limestone pieces fitted together with considerable care. The cist measured 1.75 metres east to west and just 35 to 40 centimetres wide internally, sealed by six well-fitted lintels, two of which overlapped slightly, with smaller packing stones supporting the edges. Inside, the man, estimated to have been between 25 and 35 years old and around 1.69 metres tall in life, lay extended on his back, head to the west, arms at his sides, feet together. The tightly fitted position and the posture of the limbs suggested he had likely been wrapped in a winding-sheet or shroud. The radiocarbon date of AD 345 to 539 places him early within the known range of lintel graves of this type, a form of burial associated with the transition between later prehistoric and early Christian practices in Ireland. A standing stone and a ring-barrow lie roughly 176 metres to the west-north-west, reminders that this corner of Clare had been used for burial and ritual across multiple periods long before this particular man was laid into the ground.