That distinction matters. Where an earthen ringfort might dissolve quietly back into the landscape over the centuries, a cashel's stone circuit tends to persist, its outline surviving as a low, lumpy ring in a field, or occasionally as something more substantial. These structures were the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth centuries, built to protect a family, their livestock, and their grain stores. The cashel at Lismoran is one of thousands scattered across the country, yet each one occupies its own specific patch of ground, chosen by someone, at some point, for reasons that made sense to them.