But what survives at Cinn Aird Thiar is the eroded outline of a rath, a type of ringfort that once served as an enclosed farmstead, typically during the early medieval period in Ireland. The bank is now only around half a metre high and roughly two and a half metres wide on its better-preserved northern side, and a later field wall has cut across the eastern arc entirely, leaving the circuit incomplete. The enclosure measures about 21 metres across, which falls within the smaller end of the range typical for this kind of settlement.

Within the northern sector of the enclosed area, a slightly raised oval patch of ground, measuring roughly five and a half metres by four and a half metres, is thought to represent the footprint of a former structure, most likely a simple hut. This kind of interior feature is easy to overlook but is often the most telling detail a rath can offer, since it hints at where a family actually lived and worked within the defended space. The site was already recorded as a circular enclosure on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map, meaning it was recognisable in the landscape when surveyors passed through in the nineteenth century, even if subsequent agricultural activity has since reduced it further. A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan documented it as part of their archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996.