That absence is itself worth noting. Enclosures, in the Irish archaeological sense, cover a broad range of structures: ringforts used as defended farmsteads, ecclesiastical enclosures marking the boundaries of early monastic sites, or the earthen remains of enclosures whose original function has long since become ambiguous. Without more detailed survey information, Ballysallagh belongs to this last, quieter category, the kind of site that exists in the landscape as a shape, a slight rise or a curving bank, before it exists in any written account.