These structures, known variously as raths or ringforts, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a raised circular area enclosed by one or more banks and ditches. They served as farmsteads, enclosing a family's home, animals, and outbuildings against the ordinary hazards of the day rather than any grand military threat. There are tens of thousands of them recorded across the island, yet each one represents a particular household, a particular patch of ground, chosen and shaped by people whose names are almost never recoverable.

The townland name Boyogonnell hints at the deep layering of Irish place-name history, though the specific story of this particular rath, who built it, when it was occupied, and what if anything has been found within its banks, remains to be fully documented in the public record. What can be said is that Mayo contains a remarkable concentration of early medieval settlement evidence, and that a rath in a townland like Boyogonnell would fit into a pattern of dispersed farmstead settlement that characterised the Irish countryside from roughly the fifth century through to the coming of the Normans in the twelfth. The earthen banks, where they survive, were typically thrown up from the material dug out to form the surrounding fosse, or ditch, leaving a profile that can still be read clearly from ground level or from the air.