Enclosures of this type are among the most common and most varied features in the Irish archaeological landscape. They can be the remains of a ringfort, a secular farmstead enclosed by an earthen bank and ditch, perhaps dating anywhere from the early medieval period into the later centuries of the first millennium. They might equally be the boundary of an ecclesiastical site, a burial ground, or an earlier prehistoric settlement. Without more detailed investigation, the term holds the place open.

Inishmaine itself has a longer story. The island was home to an Augustinian monastery, founded in the twelfth century on the site of an earlier church associated with Saint Cormac. The monastery's remains, including a Romanesque doorway of some refinement, still stand on the island and represent one of the more quietly significant medieval survivals in the west of Ireland. Whether the enclosure recorded nearby relates to that monastic history, predates it, or belongs to an entirely separate period of settlement is not currently known from the available record. Islands like this, accessible by boat across Lough Mask and separated from the ordinary traffic of the surrounding landscape, often preserve layers of occupation that overlap in ways that take time to disentangle.