A single enclosure might be a ringfort, a field boundary, or any number of things; six in close proximity suggests something more deliberate, a pattern of settlement or land use that invites questions the landscape itself no longer answers plainly. Circular enclosures of this kind are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to the twelfth centuries, and used as enclosed farmsteads or places of small-scale habitation and livestock management. The fact that several survive together at Derrynagree points to a community, or at least a sustained period of human activity, in what is now a quiet corner of south-west Kerry.

The area falls within the territory covered by the Archaeological Inventory of County Kerry, a systematic survey of south-west Kerry that brought together field evidence and earlier records into a published account. The Derrynagree enclosures appear there as entry thirty-nine in a sequence of six circular features noted in the same stretch of ground, a grouping that the inventory authors, O'Sullivan and Sheehan, drew attention to as a distinct cluster worth remarking upon. Beyond that, the particular character of the individual enclosure, its dimensions, its state of preservation, the height of any surviving earthwork, remains in the published record rather than immediately visible from the place name alone.