Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a raised earthen enclosure, sometimes reinforced with timber or stone, that enclosed a family's house and outbuildings. Tens of thousands once existed across the island, and a great many survive today, worn down by time and agriculture but still legible as low rings in fields and pasture.

Ballycasey More is a townland near Shannon in Clare, an area that would have been settled and farmed throughout the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, when the rath was the standard unit of rural life. The family or extended kin group living within such an enclosure would have kept cattle, grown crops, and operated within a carefully graded social order described in early Irish law texts. The earthworks themselves served less as military fortifications than as markers of status and practical enclosures for livestock. Clare has a particularly dense concentration of surviving ringforts, a reflection both of the county's long farming history and the relative resilience of earthen monuments in its soil.