The find was the kind that comes with no warning and no ceremony, exposed not by archaeological intent but by the ordinary business of extracting gravel.

What the disturbance revealed was a cist, a type of burial box assembled from flat slabs, rectangular in form and oriented east to west. It measured five feet in length and two feet in width, with three stones forming each long side and a single slab closing each end. Inside, lying fully extended, were the skeletal remains of a tall adult man. The bones recorded included two femurs, two fibulae, two tibiae, part of the pelvis, the sacrum, some ribs, and one humerus, all described at the time as being in a good state of preservation. The body had been laid on smaller stones loosely spread across the gravel bed, then covered over with flat flags. A scholar named Lee documented the burial in 1924, and it is through his account that the details survive. Reid also told Lee of two further cists nearby, though none of them, including the original, has since been precisely located on the ground. Three graves, a tall man, and a field in Mid Cork: the coordinates, for now, remain open.