A cashel is simply the stone-built equivalent of an earthen ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead that was the standard unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Where an earthen ringfort used banks of soil and ditches, a cashel used dry-stone walling, a practical choice in areas where limestone lay close to the surface and timber was scarce. Clare is well supplied with both conditions, and cashels are a familiar, if rarely examined, presence across the county's fields and hillsides.