⁷Ní Cheallaigh, Máirín. "Going Astray in the Fort Field: Traditional' Attitudes Towards Ringforts in Nineteenth-Century Ireland." The Journal of Irish Archaeology, 15 (2006): 105
According to Matthew Stout, "Most excavated ringforts have revealed the foundations of a range of buildings within their banks indicated that the surviving monuments were in fact farmsteads which would have enclosed a single farming family and their retainers." ( Stout, Matthew. The Irish Ringfort. Dublin: Four Courts, 1997. 32.) Stout insists on the defensive capabilities of the ringforts by arguing that, "...none of these deficiencies, other than the absence of a palisade, seriously challenges the defensive nature of ringforts and it is unlikely that a population which worked on a daily basis with post and wattle fencing and housing would not have erected a similar structure along the tops of at least some of their enclosures." (pp. 19-20).