The name is a diminutive of the Irish word "lios", typically used for a ringfort or enclosure, though here it marks something older and more solemn: a burial ground, its exact origins unrecorded but its presence still legible in the slight rise of earth and stone beneath the grass.

The mound measures roughly 13.8 metres north to south and 14 metres east to west, making it almost perfectly circular, a shape that tends to suggest deliberate, careful construction rather than any natural formation. Circular burial mounds of this kind appear across Ireland in various periods, from prehistoric cairns to early medieval enclosures, and the persistence of a local name like Lisheen suggests the site was recognised and remembered by the surrounding community long after its original purpose had been forgotten. It was recorded as part of an archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district, an area bounded by Lough Mask and Lough Carra, two of the largest lakes in Connacht, a region with a particularly dense concentration of early monuments.