The example at Carrowjames in County Mayo is one such site, a rath sitting quietly in the townland without fanfare or visitor infrastructure, its presence noted on the archaeological record but its particular story not yet widely documented.

A rath, to give the form its Irish name, is a type of ringfort defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches enclosing a roughly circular area. They were built predominantly during the early medieval period, broadly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and served most commonly as enclosed farmsteads for families of some local standing. The land around Carrowjames, like much of County Mayo, carries deep layers of settlement stretching back through the early Christian period and beyond, and a rath in this townland would fit a pattern familiar across the west of Ireland, where such enclosures often occupy slight rises in otherwise open agricultural ground. The place name itself is worth noting: Carrowjames derives from the Irish "ceathrú", meaning a quarter division of land, a unit of territorial measurement that was already old when these earthworks were in active use.