The name itself offers the first clue to what lies here: "lios beag" in Irish means simply "small fort", pointing to the presence of a ringfort, one of those circular enclosures, typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch, that were built across Ireland during the early medieval period as farmsteads and places of shelter. Tens of thousands of them survive across the country in varying states of preservation, and yet each one occupies its own particular patch of ground with its own particular silence.