An enclosure, in the archaeological sense, is broadly what it sounds like: a defined area set apart from its surroundings by a bank, ditch, wall, or some combination of these. In Ireland, such features date from many different periods and served many different purposes, from the ringforts of the early medieval period to prehistoric ceremonial sites, to simple field boundaries that acquired significance over time. Which of these categories the Cloondrinagh enclosure belongs to remains, for the moment, unclear.

The townland sits in a county whose landscape is threaded through with earthworks, cashels, and enclosures of various ages. Clare's geology, particularly the limestone karst of the Burren in the north, has helped preserve surface features that would have been ploughed away elsewhere, and even in the less dramatic parts of the county, field monuments survive in surprising numbers. The formal designation of the Cloondrinagh site as a recorded monument means that it has been identified and protected, but the details that would give it a fuller story, its date, its form, its original function, have not yet been made available. It exists, for now, as a shape in the ground whose meaning is still waiting to be told.