The rath at Ballyegan in County Kerry is one such site, a circular earthwork enclosure of the kind that served as a farmstead or defended homestead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. A rath, to distinguish it from a stone-built cashel, was typically formed by throwing up one or more earthen banks around a central living area, with the excavated material creating an outer ditch. These were not military fortifications in any grand sense but rather the domestic architecture of a farming family with enough status to mark their territory in the landscape.