Field systems are among the most quietly revelatory of all archaeological monuments: they are the actual working landscapes of people who farmed, divided, and argued over ground long before any written record took notice of them. Where boundary walls or earthen banks survive, they can preserve the logic of an entire agricultural economy, sometimes stretching back to the Bronze Age or earlier, sometimes representing the more recent reorganisation of land under Gaelic or post-medieval tenure.

Clare is particularly rich in such survivals. The county's limestone plains and upland areas have, in places, kept ancient field boundaries that elsewhere were erased by later cultivation or land clearance. A field system of this kind typically consists of a network of low stone walls, banks, or ditches that once separated plots used for tillage, grazing, or both. The pattern of enclosure, the orientation of boundaries, and their relationship to nearby settlement sites or burial monuments can all help date and interpret a system, though doing so usually requires close survey work on the ground.