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 the circular earthen banks of a ringfort, which would have defined a farmstead in the early medieval period, to the drystone walls of a later pastoral enclosure, and the distinction between them is not always obvious from the ground or even from the air. What places like Garryduff represent, in the most basic sense, is a deliberate marking of space, a boundary drawn by people who lived and worked in this part of Mayo and considered it worth the effort to enclose.