A ring barrow is among the more modest expressions of prehistoric funerary architecture: typically a low central mound surrounded by a ditch and sometimes an outer bank, the whole arrangement forming a roughly circular enclosure that could be anywhere from a few metres to several tens of metres across. They are not uncommon across Ireland, but their very ordinariness is part of what makes them easy to overlook, absorbed into field boundaries and farmland over millennia.

Corbally as a place-name derives from the Irish Corrbhaile, sometimes interpreted as meaning an odd or pointed settlement, though the barrow itself almost certainly predates any such nomenclature by thousands of years. Clare has a considerable concentration of prehistoric monuments, shaped in part by the same limestone geology that defines the Burren to the north, where thin soils and relatively stable land use have allowed ancient earthworks to survive with less disturbance than in more intensively farmed regions. Ring barrows of this type were generally used for individual or small-group burials, and excavated examples elsewhere in Ireland have produced cremated remains, grave goods such as pottery or bronze objects, and occasionally evidence of later reuse during the Iron Age.