The example at Ballymakegoge in County Kerry is one such site, a rath, the term used for a ringfort constructed from earthen banks rather than stone, that sits in this corner of Munster as a remnant of early medieval rural life. Raths were typically the enclosed farmsteads of farming families, their circular earthen ramparts defining a domestic space for a household, its animals, and its stores, most likely in use somewhere between the fifth and twelfth centuries.

Ballymakegoge itself is a townland name with the particular texture common to Kerry placenames, layered with older Irish-language roots. The ringfort there belongs to a dense network of similar monuments across the county, a landscape that was already ancient when the Normans arrived and began remaking it. Without more detailed field records available for this specific site, what can be said is that its very existence in this townland points to early medieval settlement in an area that would have been worked agricultural ground long before any written account of it survives. The earthen form of a rath, unlike the stone cashels more commonly associated with western Kerry, suggests a community building with what the local soil and terrain offered most readily.