Enclosures of this kind are among the most common yet most ambiguous monuments in the Irish countryside. The term covers a broad range of structures, from early medieval ringforts, which were enclosed farmsteads typically bounded by an earthen bank and ditch, to later field systems and ecclesiastical enclosures. Without knowing which type this particular example represents, it remains quietly open to interpretation, a shape in the ground that has outlasted whatever it once contained.

Lankill is a small townland in Mayo, a county whose boglands and hillsides preserve an unusually dense concentration of ancient earthworks, many of them still unexcavated and known only from surface survey. The formal record for this enclosure exists, but the details it holds have not yet been made publicly available, which places Lankill in a category occupied by a surprisingly large number of Irish monuments: officially acknowledged, mapped, and assigned a classification, but not yet fully brought into the light of documented history.