The banks, which enclose an area of roughly 400 metres by 350 metres, are the kind of feature that rewards a slow eye. They are easy to dismiss as field boundaries of no particular age, yet what they outline is a coherent and layered settlement, with enclosures, possible domestic structures, and subdivided land all legible in the arrangement of the stones.

Within the north-east quadrant of the system sit two possible rectangular houses, each averaging around 11.4 metres in length and 4.5 metres in width, accompanied by a small square enclosure measuring roughly 10 metres on each side. The north-west quadrant holds a larger, irregular enclosure, approximately 30 metres by 20 metres, the kind of space that might have served as a stock pen or a gathering area attached to the household. Two further enclosures occupy the southern half of the complex, and an additional field system lies directly to the east, suggesting that what survives at Carnaun is not an isolated farmstead but part of a wider agricultural pattern that once organised this part of the Galway landscape. Field systems of this kind, defined by hand-built stone banks rather than later ditched boundaries, are frequently associated with early medieval or pre-Norman settlement in the west of Ireland, where stone was plentiful and soil thin enough that every cleared patch of ground was worth delineating carefully.