These enclosures, known in Irish as raths, were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a raised circular area defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches. They were domestic spaces, places where families kept livestock at night and built their homes, and tens of thousands of them survive across the country in varying states of completeness. The one at Lisduff is among the less documented examples, its particulars not yet widely recorded, which gives it a quality shared by many such sites: it exists more fully in the field than on any page.

The name Lisduff itself offers a small clue. In Irish, lios is a common word for a ringfort or enclosure, and dubh means black or dark, so the townland may well take its identity from the very monument that sits within it. This kind of naming is not unusual in Ireland, where the density of early medieval settlement left its mark not only in the soil but in the map. Raths were typically built and occupied between roughly the sixth and tenth centuries, though many continued in use or were reused long after that period. Over time they accumulated folklore, often becoming associated with the fairies or the sí, which in practical terms meant local communities sometimes left them alone rather than disturb them, an unintentional form of preservation that has kept many intact to the present day.