A ring barrow is one of the more modest forms of prehistoric funerary monument: typically a low central mound enclosed by a circular ditch and an outer bank, the whole thing rarely dramatic in scale but unmistakable once you know what you are looking at. They are found scattered across Ireland, often on elevated ground or on the edges of agricultural land, and their presence in a townland is usually the only remaining evidence that people once considered a particular spot significant enough to bury their dead with ceremony.

Corbally is a townland in County Clare, a county whose landscape holds a considerable number of prehistoric monuments, from the limestone pavements of the Burren to the earthworks and enclosures of its interior parishes. Ring barrows as a class tend to date from the Bronze Age, roughly 2000 to 500 BC, though some were constructed or reused into the Iron Age. The monument at Corbally is recorded as part of Ireland's national inventory of archaeological sites, placing it among thousands of such features that survive, often as slight earthworks, in the Irish countryside.