It sits in the official record without a detailed description, a date, or a named excavator, which is itself an oddly common condition for earthworks across Ireland. The term covers a wide range of constructed landforms, from the enclosing banks of a ringfort to the raised platforms of a ceremonial mound, and without further investigation it is genuinely difficult to say which tradition this particular feature belongs to.

Ballincar lies close to the coast, in a part of County Sligo that has been settled and farmed since at least the Neolithic period. The wider landscape is dense with prehistoric and early medieval remains, and an earthwork here would not be out of place in either tradition. Coastal and estuarine areas were particularly attractive to early communities for their access to marine resources, sheltered ground, and navigable water, and earthworks in such settings sometimes turn out to be the eroded remnants of enclosures, field boundaries, or funerary monuments. Without excavation or detailed survey, though, this one holds its shape and keeps its silence.