The mounds have no obvious explanation on the surface, which is precisely what makes them interesting.

The site is known as Lisnacourty, from the Irish Lios na Cúirte, meaning fort of the court. It is a univallate rath, that is, a roughly circular earthwork enclosed by a single bank and ditch, of the kind built across Ireland during the early medieval period as farmsteads or places of local authority. The three interior mounds are positioned in the northeast, southeast, and western sectors of the enclosure. Souterrains, which are stone-lined underground passages typically associated with raths and used variously for storage or refuge, are said by local tradition to run beneath the fort, but they have been closed up. The mounds may mark the points where those passages once opened, or where they collapsed and were later sealed. The connection remains unconfirmed, but it is a reasonable working theory given how often souterrain entrances were deliberately blocked in later centuries. The site was documented in C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995.