Built by piling timber, stone, peat, and brushwood into shallow lake or bog water, crannogs offered their inhabitants a defensible platform removed from the shore, accessible only by boat or a deliberately concealed causeway. They are among the more quietly remarkable features of the Irish landscape, easily overlooked from a distance as a low, reedy mound in the water, unremarkable to a passing eye.

Bekan lies in the barony of Costello in east Mayo, a landscape of small lakes and low drumlin hills shaped by glacial activity, the kind of terrain that once supported dozens of such lake settlements. Crannogs in this region tend to date from the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to the twelfth centuries, when they functioned as the residences of local lords or farming families seeking security in an era of persistent raiding and shifting political allegiances. The specific history of this particular site, including who built it, when it was occupied, and what remains survive beneath the waterline or within the island mound itself, is not currently documented in detail in the public record.