They do not follow any pattern that archaeologists have been able to match to a known type of earthwork, which is itself a small puzzle worth pausing over. The most straightforward features of a monastic or post-monastic site tend to leave recognisable traces; these do not, and that ambiguity is part of what makes them interesting.

Kilcooly Abbey was a Cistercian foundation, and the earthworks around it could belong to almost any phase of the site's long life. They may reflect the physical organisation of the monastic precinct during the abbey's working centuries, the kind of practical landscape management, drainage, cultivation plots, or enclosures, that communities of monks imposed on their surroundings. Equally, they could date from after the Dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century, when the abbey buildings were converted to residential use. An estate map drawn up in 1749 records a large oval garden immediately to the east of the abbey and a large square garden to the north, suggesting that the grounds were still being actively shaped well into the post-medieval period. By the time the first edition six-inch Ordnance Survey map was published in 1840, further gardens were shown running roughly east to west between the abbey and a boundary wall to the west. Each of these later interventions would have left its own marks in the soil, layering over or cutting through whatever came before.