The labour involved in building such a structure was considerable, and the decision to live on water rather than land was almost always a deliberate one, driven by the defensive advantages that even a short stretch of open water could provide. Crannogs were occupied across a long sweep of Irish prehistory and into the early medieval period, and Mayo, with its abundance of lakes and slow-moving rivers, contains a notable number of them.

The Abhainn na Niorach itself is a relatively modest watercourse in the west of the county, and the presence of a crannog along its course points to a community that once found this stretch of river worth defending or at least worth the effort of island living. Without excavation records or historical documentation presently available for this specific site, the finer details, who built it, when it was occupied, and what material culture it might have yielded, remain open questions. What can be said is that crannogs in this part of Ireland were typically constructed between the early Bronze Age and the early medieval period, with many reaching their peak use between roughly the sixth and twelfth centuries. They tend to show up as low, reed-fringed mounds in shallow water, sometimes barely distinguishable from a natural islet unless you know what you are looking at.