A cashel is a ringfort built from dry-stone walling rather than earthen banks, a distinction that often reflects the geology of the ground beneath it. In the west of Ireland, where limestone lies close to the surface and earth is thin, stone was the obvious material, and cashels dot the fields of Clare in numbers that suggest a densely settled early medieval countryside.

Ringforts in general were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, occupied roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, enclosing a family's dwelling and outbuildings within a defensive circuit. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation, from near-complete stone enclosures to barely perceptible cropmark rings visible only from the air. The example at Curraderra belongs to a part of Clare where the Burren's influence on both landscape and building tradition is felt, even if the townland sits at some remove from that formation's more celebrated reaches. Beyond its classification as a cashel-type ringfort and its location, the documentary record for this particular site remains thin.