These enclosures, known interchangeably as raths or ringforts, were the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. A rath is essentially a circular area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, within which a family farmstead would have stood. Tens of thousands of them survive across the country in varying states of preservation, from near-perfect rings visible from the air to barely perceptible rises in a grass field.

Burrane lies in west Clare, a part of the county where early settlement activity has left numerous traces in the ground. Ringforts in this region were generally the homesteads of free farming families, their raised banks serving as much as a marker of status and territorial boundary as any practical defence. The interior would typically have contained a timber or wattle house, animal pens, and storage pits, with the surrounding bank perhaps topped by a wooden palisade. Over time, many such sites accumulated layers of local folklore, often associated in rural tradition with the fairies or the otherworld, which paradoxically helped preserve them as farmers avoided disturbing the ground.