That single function, the quiet demarcation of one territory from another, is enough to place it in a long tradition of landscape management that predates written records in Ireland. Boundary mounds were raised to make visible something that would otherwise require local knowledge to understand: where one holding, parish, or estate ended and another began. They are easy to overlook, easy to plough away, and easy to mistake for natural undulations in the land, which is part of why relatively few survive in recognisable form.

The classification as a boundary mound tells us something about how the feature was interpreted rather than precisely when it was built. Such earthworks could belong to almost any period, from the early medieval organisation of townlands to the demarcation of estate lands in the post-medieval centuries. The townland name Cloonkeen derives from the Irish, broadly suggesting a small meadow or grassy place, which points to this being low-lying, pastoral ground of the kind where territorial markers had practical everyday significance for farming communities. Without excavation or documentary evidence tied specifically to this mound, its precise origins remain open.