It is the kind of monument that appears on maps as a symbol, a rough circle or oval suggesting a boundary wall or earthen bank, without much to tell you what it enclosed, who built it, or when. Enclosures of this general type are among the most common archaeological features in Ireland, ranging from early medieval ringforts, which served as defended farmsteads for a single family or small community, to prehistoric stock enclosures or ritual boundaries. Without further detail, Ballynew's example holds its own counsel.

Mayo as a county is unusually dense with such features. The western seaboard, with its thin soils and long history of marginal farming, has preserved earthworks that elsewhere were ploughed flat centuries ago. An enclosure in a townland like Ballynew could date anywhere from the Bronze Age to the early medieval period, and the distinction matters enormously in terms of how it was used and by whom. A ringfort might have housed a family of some local standing, with a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage used for storage or refuge, cut beneath the interior. A simpler enclosure might be nothing more than a field boundary that acquired significance over generations. The record exists; the story attached to it does not, at least not yet in any form that has reached the public domain.