A house built in the late 1970s sits directly on the inner enclosure. And yet, beneath and around these intrusions, one of the more complex prehistoric monuments in County Kerry survives, partially at least, on a low hill near Tralee. What makes the site at Knockanacuig particularly curious is the gap between how it has been officially classified and what the physical evidence actually suggests. It is recorded as a ringfort, a term generally applied to the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically a single bank and ditch surrounding a dwelling. But the outer defensive elements point instead to a hillfort, a much earlier and larger class of monument, with multiple concentric enclosures designed to command and control a landscape rather than simply protect a homestead.

The hill sits only 35 metres above sea level but occupies a strategic position on a ridge running from the western end of the Stacks Mountains toward Tralee Bay, with clear sightlines across the Dingle Peninsula, the Slieve Mish mountains, and the estuary of the River Lee. The name Knockanacuig, meaning "the hill of the five", may itself be suggestive; four modern townlands converge at the monument, and the middle enclosing bank forms the actual boundary of the Knockanacuig townland. The site was described in the minute books of the County Kerry Field Club following a visit in November 1940, when it was known both as "Stroppenard", from the Irish Strapa an Aird meaning something like "the high cliff path or climb", and as "John Huggard's Fort". The 1940 account describes a triple-banked arrangement: a central mound ringed by an earthen rampart, then a level area, then a second rampart, then a ditch, then a third outer embankment. Local memory adds a further detail, that the central mound, said to have stood over 5 metres high and to have contained a spring that periodically filled with water, was levelled in 1958. An aerial photograph taken in 1967 still shows the inner enclosure largely intact, with features visible inside the bank that have since disappeared entirely. Field survey identified a third, outermost bank on the western and south-western side, up to 17 metres wide, following the natural shoulder of the hill at roughly the 34-metre contour. If this outer element once continued all the way around, the monument would have enclosed an area of approximately 4.5 hectares, placing it firmly in the category of a substantial prehistoric hillfort, possibly one enclosing an even earlier burial mound at its centre.

Excavations carried out in 2006 ahead of a proposed road realignment, a project that met with considerable local opposition, confirmed that the middle bank and the large ditch described in the 1940 Field Club minutes do survive beneath the surface. The inward-spiralling entrance on the eastern side, where a break in the middle bank curves back to connect with the inner enclosure, is among the more legible features still readable in the landscape, though the road cuts across it at two points. The second bank, up to 141 metres north to south, is still traceable around much of the site, crowned in places by bushes and trees, pressed into service as a field boundary along parts of its southern and western extent.