At Ballynaganoge in County Limerick, on a gently sloping field that runs down toward the River Maigue, a cremation pit was uncovered during pipeline construction in 2002. It was modest in every visible sense, a sub-circular pit barely 42 centimetres across and 43 centimetres deep, packed with dark, charcoal-rich silt. But the cremated bone fragments it contained were notably larger than those found at comparable sites along the same pipeline route, and that difference, quiet as it sounds, sets this burial apart.

The site came to light during Bord Gáis Éireann's Pipeline to the West project, which cut through a remarkably dense corridor of prehistoric archaeology in this part of Limerick. A cluster of related sites was excavated around 500 metres to the south-east, documented in a subsequent study by Grogan and others in 2007. The Ballynabanoge burial itself, along with three associated pits, was excavated by Taylor in 2004 within a 24-metre stretch of the pipeline corridor, straddling the base of a hill at the edge of the river flood-plain. Pit 5, which contained the cremated remains, was cut into a gravel terrace overlooking the Maigue. No artefacts were recovered, so dating relies on context and the character of the deposit, pointing toward the Bronze Age. What distinguished the site was noted carefully by the excavator: at most cremation burials along the pipeline, the bone had been deliberately crushed before being placed in the ground, a common funerary practice. Here, the fragments were left proportionally large, suggesting either a different ritual custom or, perhaps, a different relationship between the living and whoever was being interred. Some bone was lost even before full excavation began, truncated during the mechanical topsoil-stripping that preceded the dig. Nothing of this site had appeared on historical Ordnance Survey maps or aerial photographs before its discovery.

The field sits around 100 metres south-west of the River Maigue and the townland boundary with Inchinclare, on north-east-facing pasture that gives little outward sign of what lies beneath. There is nothing to see on the surface today, and access to working farmland requires consideration for landowners. The site is best understood as part of a wider prehistoric landscape along this stretch of the Maigue valley, one that only became legible when a pipeline corridor sliced through it.