What makes this one worth a second look is how much of it has managed to survive, and how its survival is uneven, present in some places and effectively gone in others, as though the ground has been selectively forgetful.

A rath is an early medieval earthwork enclosure, typically circular or near-circular, formed by one or more raised banks with a ditch, known as a fosse, dug between them. They were built across Ireland in their thousands, usually as enclosed farmsteads, and this example at Caraun More follows the form closely. It measures roughly 36 metres north to south and 35 metres east to west, making it almost perfectly circular. Two banks survive, with a fosse running between them, which places it in the category of a bivallate rath, a more elaborately defended type than the simpler single-banked examples more commonly encountered. The outer bank, however, tells a complicated story. It remains clearly visible at the north-west and north-east, but along the northern arc between those two points, and again at the south, no surface trace survives at all. The earthwork does not fade gradually; it simply stops, and then resumes, as though sections of it were removed or levelled at some point, or were gradually lost to the wet, poorly draining ground that surrounds it.