On the Ordnance Survey map of 1842, a pentagonal enclosure at Moneen in West Cork is labelled simply as a killeen burial ground, killeen being the Irish term for an unconsecrated burial place, typically used for unbaptised infants or others excluded from churchyard burial. Yet the OS Name Books of the same period describe the same spot quite differently, as a Danish fort that had formerly been used as a burial ground. The gap between those two descriptions is where the real interest lies.

The site belongs to a pattern common across Ireland, where early enclosures, often ringforts or similar earthworks dating from the early medieval period, were later pressed into secondary use as informal burial grounds. The term "Danish fort" in nineteenth-century sources rarely indicates anything Scandinavian; it was the catch-all label applied by local tradition and early surveyors to any earthwork of uncertain age, usually a ringfort, which is a roughly circular enclosed settlement typically defined by a raised bank and ditch. What makes the Moneen enclosure slightly unusual is its pentagonal rather than circular outline, still legible as a distinct field shape in 1842. Low undulations recorded to the south and southwest hint at subsurface remains, and there is a local tradition of a souterrain associated with the site, a souterrain being an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, often connected to a ringfort and used for storage or as a place of refuge. Whether that passage survives intact beneath the ground is not recorded.