What makes them unusual is their shape: where the field boundaries lower on the hill run in straight, regular lines of the kind associated with post-medieval land enclosure, these walls meander. That difference in form is itself a kind of evidence, suggesting the upper walls belong to an earlier phase of activity altogether, possibly prehistoric.

The walls lie immediately south and east of a cairn, a term for a mound of heaped stones that in Irish prehistory typically marks a burial or territorial boundary, and close to what may be a hilltop enclosure, a roughly circular or oval boundary defining a raised interior. Both features sit just off the summit, in a position with wide views of the surrounding countryside, which is itself consistent with sites that were deliberately placed for visibility or surveillance in prehistoric periods. The southernmost of the wandering walls does double duty: it now forms the townland boundary between Barranisky and Glenteige, suggesting that later administrative divisions were simply mapped onto a line that was already there. Whether the walls represent the remnants of an ancient field system, where land was divided for grazing or cultivation, or something more defensive, a set of linear earthworks associated with the enclosure, remains an open question. Aerial photography has helped clarify the pattern on the ground, with the meandering upper walls clearly distinguishable from their straight-edged neighbours lower on the hill, but interpretation is cautious throughout.