Where a typical ringfort uses banks of compacted earth and ditches to define a farmstead's perimeter, a cashel relies on drystone walling, a construction method that in the west of Ireland reflects both the abundance of limestone and the relative scarcity of workable soil. The Burren region and its surrounds in Clare are particularly associated with these stone-built enclosures, and their presence across the landscape speaks to a pattern of early medieval settlement that was dense, locally organised, and enduring.

Cashels of this type were generally built and occupied during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, functioning as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or extended household. The circular or oval stone wall provided both a practical boundary for livestock and a degree of social definition, marking out the household's territory within the wider túath, the basic unit of political organisation in Gaelic Ireland. Some cashels were elaborated over time with internal structures, souterrains (underground stone-lined passages, likely used for storage and refuge), or additional outer walls, though the specifics of what survives at Rinelea are not currently documented in any accessible published form.

The townland name Rinelea itself suggests a coastal or peninsular geography, and Clare's western fringe is scattered with early medieval remains that have received relatively little individual attention compared to the more celebrated sites further into the Burren. The cashel at Rinelea belongs to a category of monument that is genuinely common in the Irish record yet rarely visited or interpreted for a general audience, existing as a stone enclosure in a field, legible to those who know what they are looking at, easy to overlook for those who do not.