The name itself offers a clue: "lios" is the Irish word for a ringfort, an enclosed circular dwelling or farmstead typically built between the early medieval period and the early centuries of the second millennium. The "lurg" element likely refers to a shin or ridge of land, suggesting the site occupies some kind of raised or elongated ground. That combination, a defensive or enclosed structure on a prominent feature of the terrain, is exactly the kind of arrangement that defined rural settlement in early medieval Ireland.

Beyond the placename, the specific history of this site remains to be fully documented in the public record. What can be said is that fortifications of this type in Connacht often served as the enclosed homesteads of farmers or minor lords, their earthen banks and ditches marking out territory and providing a degree of protection for people and livestock alike. Sligo itself has a dense concentration of such monuments, reflecting centuries of Gaelic settlement before and after the Norman period.