The combination paints an oddly domestic picture: grain being ground, cloth being sewn, everyday life continuing inside a boundary ditch that had been cut into the earth centuries before.

The enclosure came to light during excavation carried out in 2000 by archaeologist Donald Murphy. Beneath the surface he found the profile of a V-shaped ditch, roughly 1.6 metres wide and 0.9 metres deep, the kind of boundary feature typically associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland. Such enclosures, usually circular or sub-circular ditched areas, were dug to define a farmstead or settlement, separating domestic space from the wider landscape. What makes Coolaholloga particularly interesting is that this enclosure sits to the north of a second, separately excavated enclosure on the same site, suggesting this was not an isolated farmstead but part of a more complex arrangement of activity across the area. The medieval pottery and the thimble point to continued or later use of the site well into the medieval period, long after the initial enclosure was formed.