Yet this modest fragment, found lying on the surface of Derryville bog in County Kilkenny, carries a date somewhere between 1310 and 910 BC, placing it firmly in the Bronze Age. That it survived at all is down to the preserving chemistry of bogland, where waterlogged, oxygen-poor conditions can hold organic material in a kind of suspended animation for millennia.

The piece was uncovered in 2006 during a fieldwalking survey of the Bord na Móna industrial peatlands in the Littleton group of bogs, a large complex of midland raised bogs that have been harvested for fuel on an industrial scale. Fieldwalking in this context means archaeologists moving systematically across ground that machinery has already disturbed or exposed, looking for anything brought to the surface. The roundwood, oriented east to west, was in moderate condition when found. Its identification as hazel is significant in itself; hazel was widely used in prehistoric Ireland for wattle construction, trackways across boggy ground, and structural frameworks. Whether this fragment once formed part of a walkway, a hurdle, or some other now-vanished structure is impossible to say from a single piece, but the label "structure" attached to it suggests it was considered purposeful rather than accidental debris.