A cashel is simply a ringfort built from stone rather than earth, the dry-stone walls serving the same purpose as the earthen banks and ditches of the more common ráth: to define a farmstead, mark status, and provide a degree of protection during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Ireland has tens of thousands of ringforts recorded across the country, and Clare, with its abundance of limestone, produced a particular concentration of the stone-built variety.

The townland name Bohateh is itself worth a moment's attention. Place names in this part of Clare frequently preserve older Irish forms that describe the physical character of the land, its drainage, its vegetation, or the presence of ancient structures. The cashel at Bohateh belongs to a category of monument that was once the basic unit of rural settlement across Ireland, the fortified farmstead of a farming family of some local standing. Most were built and occupied during the early medieval period, though some continued in use or were reoccupied at later dates. The stone walls of a cashel, where they survive, can still rise to a considerable height, and the interior space would originally have contained timber or wattle structures used for sleeping, storage, and the housing of animals.