The example at Liscasey in County Clare is one such site, a rath, which is the Irish term for a roughly circular earthen enclosure, typically defined by one or more raised banks and ditches. These structures were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, built and occupied broadly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and they functioned as domestic enclosures rather than military fortifications, despite the word "fort" in their modern name.

Liscasey itself is a small townland in east Clare, a county whose landscape is densely layered with early medieval remains. Clare sits at a kind of crossroads between the limestone plateaus of the Burren to the north-west and the softer agricultural lowlands that stretch toward the Shannon, and ringforts appear throughout both types of terrain. A rath of this kind would originally have enclosed a family farmstead, protecting livestock and dwellings from wolves and opportunistic raiding rather than organised warfare. The earthen banks, built up from the material dug out to form the surrounding ditch, could be reinforced with timber palisades, though little trace of such structures survives above ground after more than a thousand years. What does survive, in many cases, is the circular outline itself, sometimes slight and grassed over, sometimes still impressively defined.