That detail alone sets it apart from the typical rath, the circular or oval earthwork enclosure that served as a farmstead during early medieval Ireland, usually defined entirely by its own raised ramparts and ditches. Here, the river itself did part of the work, acting as a ready-made boundary on one side. It is the kind of arrangement that suggests a practical, opportunistic approach to defence and enclosure, making use of what the landscape already offered.

The site no longer exists in any visible form. According to local information, it was levelled during the 1970s, a fate that befell a considerable number of Irish ringforts during the decades of agricultural intensification that followed land reclamation schemes and changing farming practices. The ground at Ballykissane is now given over to pasture, with nothing above the surface to indicate what once stood there. The site was recorded in A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan's archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996, which catalogued the remarkable density of prehistoric and early historic remains across South Kerry. That the Laune-side enclosure made it into that record at all is largely down to the Ordnance Survey mapping that captured its outline before it disappeared.