It is an oddly human detail amid what is otherwise a quietly ancient landscape, a reminder that these sites have never quite stopped being worked around, built over, and gradually worn down by the ordinary business of farming.

The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. These enclosures, built from earthen banks and ditches, served as farmsteads for a single family or small community, offering a degree of protection for people and livestock rather than functioning as military fortifications in any serious sense. The Liffane example is a bivallate example, meaning it has two concentric enclosing elements: an inner earthen bank and an outer bank of earth and stone, separated by a fosse, that is, a ditch. The roughly circular interior measures approximately 35.8 metres north to south and 33 metres east to west, and the whole thing sits on an east-facing slope, with the interior ground falling gently downward in that direction. The survey, compiled by Denis Power and uploaded in August 2011, records the outer bank and its fosse as surviving only on the western and northern arc, where the ground drops away from higher land; on the other sides, erosion and cattle traffic have taken their toll.

The site sits in ordinary pasture, and the earthworks are far more legible on the ground than they might sound on paper, though some patience is needed. The inner bank is best preserved along the arc running from the southwest to the northwest, reaching an external height of around 0.85 metres, while the northeast section has been noticeably worn down by cattle moving through the area. Loose stones from the eroded outer bank have accumulated at the base of the fosse, giving that stretch a slightly rubbled appearance. The boulder on the eastern side, dumped during clearance, is easy to spot. Visiting in late autumn or winter, when pasture growth is lower, makes the full outline of the double enclosure considerably easier to read from ground level.