That arrangement came to an abrupt end in 1960, when quarrying operations cut through the burial before anyone realised what the machinery had found. By the time archaeologists O'Kelly and Murphy arrived to investigate in 1961, extensive damage had already occurred, but enough survived to piece together what had once been a carefully composed act of interment.

The burial follows a practice common across Bronze Age Ireland. An Encrusted Urn, a ceramic type characterised by applied and moulded surface decoration, was placed upside down over the cremated remains, which the excavator believed may have been wrapped in some kind of organic material before being set into a pit roughly 0.74 metres in diameter, backfilled with loose sandy soil. The urn itself, described in detail by Kavanagh in 1973, is a remarkable object. It was made from coarse, well-fired clay fired to a bright orange, and its surface was worked with considerable attention. The rim was flattened and bevelled internally, impressed with fingernail marks. The exterior carried closely scored vertical lines, two perforations in the neck area, applied discs at the joint between neck and body, and a pair of horizontal cordons, one applied, one pinched up from the clay itself. Between and below these ran oblique scores, vertical grooves producing a ribbed effect, a zone of wide incised chevrons, and long shallow oblique grooves towards the base. The overall impression is of a vessel made with real decorative intention, not simply a functional container but something whose appearance mattered to whoever made it and whoever placed it over the bones of a young adult on what was, for them, a significant occasion.