Enclosures of this kind are among the most common yet most quietly ambiguous features of the Irish countryside. The term covers a broad range of structures, from prehistoric ring-forts and early medieval raths, which were typically circular earthen banks enclosing a farmstead or settlement, to later ecclesiastical or agricultural boundaries. Without further detail, the Bellass example holds its secrets close.

Mayo is a county with an unusually dense concentration of such earthworks, a reflection of its long and layered settlement history stretching back well before the early medieval period. Many enclosures in the west of Ireland were constructed during the first millennium, serving as protected homesteads for farming families, their banks and ditches offering a degree of security as well as marking out territory. Others have ecclesiastical origins, enclosing early monastic sites or burial grounds that in some cases remained in use for centuries. Which category the Bellass enclosure falls into, and what its dimensions or condition might reveal, remains a question the available record does not yet answer.