It is the kind of monument that appears on maps as a faint outline, acknowledged by archaeology but not yet explained to the world.

An enclosure, in the broadest archaeological sense, is simply a defined area set apart by a bank, ditch, wall, or some combination of these. In Ireland, such features range enormously in age, purpose, and scale, from prehistoric ceremonial sites to early medieval farmsteads ringed by an earthen bank called a ringfort, to later enclosures associated with church lands or field management. Which of these categories the Carrowmore example belongs to, what it looks like on the ground today, how large it is, and when it was made, remains undocumented in any detail that has reached the public record. The townland name itself, Carrowmore, derives from the Irish An Ceathrú Mhór, meaning the large quarter, a common placename in the west of Ireland that originally referred to a division of agricultural land, which hints at a landscape long organised and parcelled by human hands.