That detail alone is quietly unsettling: ancient carvings of the human face, slightly larger than life-size, fitted at some point with inserted glass pupils that give them an oddly watchful quality. They are a pair, possibly representing a male and a female, and they arrived at the museum from a farmyard associated with the site recorded as WX046-058001, bringing with them questions that their stone faces are not inclined to answer.

What little is known about these heads comes from the work of researchers including Roche (1986) and Moore (1996). One of the two heads has a whistle-hole, a small perforation that is considered a marker of Iron Age date in Irish stone sculpture. The Iron Age in Ireland ran roughly from around 500 BC into the early centuries AD, a period associated with a distinctive and sometimes enigmatic sculptural tradition. The glass pupils are a separate matter entirely, almost certainly a later addition, though by whom and when is not recorded. The two heads are catalogued separately, and together they represent a type of carved stone iconic, the technical term used in Irish archaeological recording for a sculpted human image, that turns up occasionally across the country, often without clear provenance or findspot.

The heads are held at the National Museum of Ireland, whose main archaeology collections are displayed at Kildare Street in Dublin city centre. The museum's holdings are extensive and not every object is on permanent public display, so it is worth checking in advance whether these particular pieces can be seen on a given visit. For anyone interested in Iron Age carving or the quieter corners of Irish prehistoric art, the museum's archaeology galleries are worth a careful and unhurried look, since objects of this kind rarely announce themselves loudly.