On a south-south-westerly facing slope in the townland of Aghalee Beg in County Kerry, a townland boundary curves out of its way to follow the line of a fosse, the defensive ditch cut around an early medieval ringfort, rather than cutting straight across it. That kind of accommodation, repeated across centuries of land division and inheritance, suggests the rath was simply too present, too embedded in the ground, to be ignored or rationalised away.

A rath is an earthen ringfort, a circular enclosure built primarily during the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and typically used as a farmstead or high-status residence. This example at Aghalee Beg is roughly forty metres across in both directions, with a raised and level interior enclosed by an inner earthen bank measuring about 6.5 metres wide, standing nearly a metre high on the inside and a little over a metre on the exterior. Between that inner bank and an outer bank, visible to the north-west and east, runs the fosse, about 1.6 metres wide. On the south-eastern arc, the enclosure is defined instead by a scarp, a natural or cut slope rather than a built-up bank, and it is here that a possible entrance through the inner bank can be identified. The outer bank, meanwhile, has been absorbed into the existing field boundary system along the northern and north-north-easterly edges, which is a common fate for features like this, their useful linearity repurposed even as their original form survives elsewhere.