It has been levelled, its original form worn or cleared away until little or nothing of it remains above the ground surface. That kind of erasure is, in its own way, as telling as preservation. Enclosures of this type, broadly circular earthworks that once defined a farmstead, a ritual space, or a place of shelter, are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish landscape, and yet they are also among the most quietly vulnerable. Ploughing, drainage work, and the slow accumulation of agricultural improvement have removed thousands of them, leaving only a trace in the soil or a mark visible from the air.

The site at Ballymacthomas is recorded as levelled on the basis of a field inspection, which means that at some point someone visited the ground and found that whatever had once been visible was gone, or nearly gone. No further detail survives in the available record about what the enclosure originally looked like, how large it was, or when it was built. Without that, it sits in a broad category that spans many centuries of Irish prehistory and early history. Ringforts, the most familiar kind of enclosed settlement in Ireland, were typically built and used in the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, though enclosures of various kinds predate and postdate that span considerably.