That single word, enclosure, covers a great deal in Irish archaeology. It might describe a roughly circular earthwork thrown up in the early medieval period as a farmstead or small settlement, the kind of feature that once dotted the Irish landscape in its thousands and still occasionally survives as a low, grass-covered bank in a field corner. Or it might be something older or stranger. Without further detail, the classification simply tells us that someone, at some point, drew a boundary here and meant it to hold.