That is, broadly, what is known. The site is recorded as an archaeological monument, which places it in a long tradition of enclosed spaces that punctuate the Irish landscape, from the circular ringforts and cashels of the early medieval period to far older boundaries whose purposes have become harder to read over time. An enclosure, in archaeological terms, is simply a defined area set apart by a bank, ditch, wall, or some combination of these, but that plainness of description can conceal considerable variety. Some enclosed sites were farmsteads, some were ceremonial, some funerary. Without further detail, Lohercannan holds its purpose quietly.

Lohercannan itself is a small townland in Kerry, a county whose landscape is so densely layered with archaeological remains that sites can sit for generations without attracting particular attention. Kerry's geology and its history of pastoral farming have, in many places, preserved earthworks that elsewhere were ploughed flat centuries ago. The name Lohercannan likely derives from Irish, as the vast majority of Kerry townland names do, and the enclosure it contains joins thousands of similar monuments distributed across the peninsula and its hinterlands, each one a faint signature of past occupation or ritual use.