Rather than following the straight lines or gentle curves of a purely practical enclosure, the wall traces a sub-oval form, and it is precisely this shape that has led researchers to suspect something older lies beneath the logic of the modern boundary.

In 1988, archaeologist Leo Swan identified the site as a possible ecclesiastical enclosure, based on that distinctive outline. Sub-oval enclosures of this kind are associated with early medieval Irish monasticism, where religious communities typically defined their sacred ground with a roughly circular or oval boundary, often a ditch and bank, sometimes stone-walled. Over centuries, as graveyards continued in use and the original monastic context was forgotten, later generations would simply build along whatever boundary remained, often not realising they were following the ghost of something far older. Swan's observation places Archerstown within a wider pattern of such sites across Ireland, where the graveyard wall is, in effect, the last visible trace of an early Christian foundation.