The site came to light during road improvement works on the N11, when excavation revealed a burnt mound, a type of prehistoric feature found widely across Ireland and Britain, typically interpreted as the debris from a cooking or heating process involving fire-cracked stones. What makes the Kilmurry example quietly interesting is the cluster of evidence gathered around that mound, each piece adding a little more texture to what was happening there.

Archaeologist Red Tobin, working under excavation licence E3236, uncovered not just the scorched and shattered stone characteristic of these sites, but a large water-collection pit alongside it. Burnt mounds are generally understood to involve heating stones in a fire and plunging them into water, a method of bringing liquid to the boil without a vessel that could withstand direct flame. The pit here fits that pattern well. Beyond it, a series of stakeholes, the soil impressions left by driven wooden posts, indicated the outline of a small, probably temporary shelter. Someone, or a small group, camped here long enough to set up a rudimentary structure. More unexpectedly, the same area yielded 212 flint artefacts consistent with a knapping floor, a working surface where flint was struck and shaped into tools. Knapping produces a characteristic scatter of flakes, cores, and discarded fragments, and finding that concentration alongside the mound suggests this was a place of activity rather than mere passing use. Radiocarbon dates placed the site in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, a transitional period when communities in Ireland were beginning to work metal but still relied heavily on stone tools.

The site itself is no longer visible; road construction work of this kind leaves little above ground once the project is complete. Its significance is preserved in the excavation record rather than the landscape.