Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the most common form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a raised circular bank and ditch enclosing a farmstead. Tens of thousands of them survive across the country in various states of preservation, yet each one represents a particular family or community that chose a particular patch of ground and shaped it to their needs.

The place name Lisnolan offers a small clue to the site's presence. The element "lis" is one of several Irish words for a ringfort enclosure, closely related to "rath", and its survival in a townland name often signals that a monument was prominent enough, or memorable enough, to anchor the local geography long after it ceased to be inhabited. Mayo as a county contains a considerable density of such monuments, a reflection of the agricultural settlement patterns that persisted across the west of Ireland through the early medieval period, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries.