The raised area measures roughly 25 metres north to south and 31 metres east to west, defined by a scarp around two metres high, and the qualification attached to it is telling: it is listed only as "possibly" a ringfort, which places it in a category of earthworks that are old enough and worn enough to resist confident classification.

A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, was a enclosed farmstead typical of early medieval Ireland, generally consisting of a circular area bounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches. They served as homesteads and enclosures for livestock rather than defensive fortifications in any serious military sense, and thousands of them survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation. The Ballyargadaun example was already notable enough to appear on the Ordnance Survey map of 1838, recorded there as a circular area enclosed by an earthen bank, which suggests the feature was clearly legible to surveyors at the time even if its origins were uncertain. That the scarp remains two metres high after centuries of agricultural use in the surrounding fields says something about how well these earthen forms hold their shape in the landscape.