Locally it is called a "lios", the Irish term that tends to attach itself to these enclosures in folk memory, carrying with it older associations with the supernatural. To an archaeologist it is a rath, the most common monument type in the Irish landscape, yet familiarity has done little to dim the quiet oddity of encountering one in a field, half-swallowed by vegetation, while the valley opens out below it.

Ringforts, built predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, were the farmsteads of their time. A rath specifically refers to one built from earth and sod rather than stone, the bank thrown up from a central dug ditch to enclose a living and working area, sometimes with an outer bank beyond. They were not military fortifications in any serious sense but rather markers of a household's territory and status, home to a farming family and their animals. The Aultagh example sits on sloping ground in a position typical of the type, where a hillside with a commanding view of lower ground would have offered practical advantages for watching over livestock and managing the surrounding land. The earthen bank, though said to be intact in some form, has been left to the vegetation, which in the wet climate of West Cork is an efficient process.