Earthworks of this kind are among the most common and least understood features of the Irish countryside, ranging from the remains of ringforts and enclosures to field boundaries, burial mounds, or the eroded outlines of medieval settlements. Without more detailed notes on this particular example, it is not possible to say with confidence which category it belongs to, or when it was constructed.

Kiltarnaght is a townland in north Mayo, a part of the country where the land has been worked, divided, and abandoned across many centuries, leaving layers of activity that the ground still holds. Earthworks in such areas can date from the early medieval period, when ringforts served as enclosed farmsteads, or from much earlier prehistoric phases of settlement. They can also be far more recent, the product of drainage works, land clearance, or the reorganisation of holdings during and after the nineteenth century. The designation as an earthwork places it within the archaeological record, but the specific character of this feature, its form, dimensions, and the period it belongs to, remains to be set out in any accessible detail.