Enclosures of this type are among the most common and quietly puzzling features of the Irish countryside. The term covers a broad range of structures, from the circular earthen banks of a ringfort, which would have enclosed a farming household during the early medieval period, to later field enclosures and ceremonial or funerary boundaries. Without further detail it is impossible to say which tradition this particular example belongs to, or what, if anything, remains visible above ground.

The townland name Ballynamanagh derives from the Irish, likely containing the element manach, meaning monk or monastic tenant, which would point to some connection with ecclesiastical landholding in the area, though whether that has any bearing on the enclosure itself is unknown. Galway's interior is scattered with earthworks that range from the well-documented to the barely recorded, many surviving only as cropmarks or slight rises in the ground that reveal themselves differently depending on the season and the angle of the light.