These sites, known in Irish as cillíní (singular: cillín), were used for centuries to inter unbaptised infants, stillborn children, and others who, under Catholic doctrine, were considered ineligible for burial in consecrated ground. They tend to occupy liminal spaces, old boundaries, early medieval enclosures, or marginal land that already carried a sense of age and separation from the everyday world. Their locations were chosen with care, and their use was often passed down through local knowledge rather than formal record.

The practice of burying unbaptised children apart from the main parish graveyard persisted in Ireland from the medieval period well into the twentieth century. The grief attached to these places was largely private, the burials conducted quietly and without ceremony, which is part of why so many cillíní remain poorly documented. Some were associated with pre-Christian or early Christian enclosures, suggesting that communities sought out ground already considered ancient and set apart. Others were placed at the edges of townlands, near water, or along old routeways. The Caher site in Clare falls into this broader pattern, occupying a landscape that, across the Burren and its fringes, is dense with early settlement, field systems, and ecclesiastical remains.