The low stone boundaries, long since robbed of height by weather and time, mark out the divisions of a landscape that was once actively farmed, parcelled and lived in. Field systems of this kind, where parallel or irregular walls define cultivation plots or grazing enclosures, are found across Ireland, but those on Slievemore sit in a particularly layered setting, on a mountain associated with prehistoric occupation, an abandoned village, and centuries of seasonal habitation.

Slievemore has long attracted archaeological attention because it concentrates so many different periods of human activity in a relatively compact area. The deserted village at its base, a row of roofless stone cottages, is perhaps the most visited feature, connected in local memory to the Famine clearances of the 1840s, though the settlement itself is considerably older. Above and around the village, and extending further up the slope, the remains of field boundaries, enclosures, and other earthworks speak to repeated phases of land use stretching back well before any historical record. Field systems in upland areas like this are often better preserved than their lowland equivalents precisely because the ground was eventually abandoned rather than continuously cultivated, leaving the old boundaries undisturbed under a thin covering of peat and grass.