Known in Irish as a rath, a ringfort is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically circular, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches. They are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, numbering in the tens of thousands, yet each one represents a particular household, a particular patch of ground, a decision by someone in the fifth, sixth, or seventh century to dig and pile and settle.

Clare is well supplied with them. The county's landscape, shaped by limestone geology and centuries of pastoral farming, has preserved a remarkable number of these enclosures, partly because the thin soils and relatively low tillage intensity made large-scale destruction less likely than in more intensively farmed regions. Drumanure as a placename carries the Irish element droim, meaning a ridge or raised ground, which is precisely the kind of elevated, well-drained position that early farmers favoured when choosing where to build. The bank of a rath would have enclosed a family's dwelling, their animals at night, and whatever small economy sustained them through the early medieval centuries.

Very little specific detail about this particular site is currently available in the public record, and it would be a disservice to fill that silence with invention. What can be said is that its presence in the townland, even unexcavated and undescribed, is a trace of continuous human habitation in this corner of Clare stretching back well over a millennium.