Aerial and satellite imagery, including a Google Earth capture from December 2013, shows the outline with quiet clarity, one of those moments when a feature that has absorbed centuries of weather and agriculture suddenly resolves into something purposeful and geometric.

Circular enclosures of this kind are a familiar but poorly understood element of the Irish countryside. They may represent the remains of a rath or ringfort, an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch, though without excavation it is impossible to say with confidence what this particular example was built for or when. The Leabeg site came to notice through the observation of Owen Connolly, who identified the traces from satellite imagery, a reminder that some of the more quietly interesting discoveries in Irish archaeology in recent years have come not from fieldwork but from people examining publicly available aerial photographs with a careful eye.