The site at Ballyfauskeen is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was a type of enclosed farmstead built predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. These circular earthen enclosures, defined by one or more banks and ditches, were once the most common form of rural settlement across Ireland, and several thousand survive in varying states of preservation. What makes Ballyfauskeen quietly interesting is not just the monument itself but its immediate neighbourhood: a second possible ringfort lies only 15 metres to the north-west, and an excavated fulacht fia sits 90 metres to the north-east. A fulacht fia is a type of ancient cooking or processing site, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of heat-shattered stone beside a trough, and their presence near settlement sites is a recurring feature of the Irish archaeological landscape.

The site was already being recorded by cartographers in the nineteenth century. The first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1840 shows it as a roughly circular enclosure, and by the time the twenty-five-inch edition was produced in 1897 it was mapped as a slightly oval shape, measuring approximately 27 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and 24 metres north-west to south-east, defined by a scarp and a field boundary running from the north-east around to the south-east. The shift from circular to oval between the two surveys likely reflects increasing agricultural pressure on the monument's edges rather than any dramatic change in the structure itself. The site lies 215 metres east of a stream that marks the townland boundary with Curraghturk. The record was compiled by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded to the national monuments database in October 2021.

The monument is on private agricultural land, so access would require the landowner's permission. For those tracing it remotely, the scrub-covered outline is visible on Digital Globe and Google Earth orthoimages taken between 2011 and 2013, which give a clearer sense of its shape than a ground-level visit might. Anyone exploring the wider area on foot should be aware that the cluster of monuments here, the two ringforts and the fulacht fia within a radius of roughly 100 metres, suggests this corner of Ballyfauskeen was a meaningful place in the early medieval landscape, even if the pasture surrounding it gives little away today.