An enclosure, in the archaeological sense, is a broad term: it can refer to a ringfort, a farmstead boundary, a ritual site, or any number of other enclosed spaces that people in early medieval or prehistoric Ireland shaped out of the landscape using earthen banks, stone walls, or ditches. Which of these Doolaig's enclosure represents remains, for now, an open question.

The townland of Doolaig sits in Kerry, a county whose landscape holds one of the densest concentrations of archaeological sites in Ireland, from promontory forts along its Atlantic coastline to ring forts scattered across its inland hills. Many such enclosures in Kerry date to the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, when enclosed farmsteads were the dominant form of rural settlement across the island. Others are considerably older. Without further detail on this particular site, it is impossible to say more with confidence, and the site deserves better than speculation dressed up as fact.