That spare designation, simply "enclosure", covers a broad range of archaeological forms: a ringfort-type earthwork, a curving field boundary of some antiquity, or the ditched perimeter of a settlement long since returned to grass. The category is deliberately neutral, a placeholder for something that was clearly considered significant enough to record but whose precise nature remains, at least in the public domain, unresolved.

Enclosures of this kind in Clare can date from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, when enclosed farmsteads known as ringforts or raths were among the most common forms of rural settlement across Ireland. Others are older still, associated with Bronze Age activity or prehistoric land management. The townland name Knockaun, derived from the Irish "An Cnoicán", meaning the small hill or hillock, suggests a modest elevated feature in the terrain, and elevated ground was a favoured location for enclosures of all periods, offering drainage, visibility, and a degree of natural defence. Without further detail on this particular site, those general patterns are about as far as the evidence responsibly carries us.