Known in Irish as a rath, this type of monument is one of the most common archaeological features in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the country, yet each one represents a individual farmstead, a family, a life organised within a roughly circular earthen bank and ditch during the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1000 AD. The sheer frequency of raths across Kerry and the wider island can make them easy to overlook, which is perhaps the strangest thing about them. They are everywhere, and yet they are rarely the first thing anyone thinks to look for.

Raths were the everyday settlements of early medieval Ireland, home to farmers and their extended families rather than to kings or warriors, though higher-status versions with multiple enclosing banks did exist. The enclosure, formed by one or more earthen ramparts, would have contained a house or houses, animal pens, and storage structures. The Cloghers area of Kerry sits within a county extraordinarily rich in early medieval activity, where the Atlantic coastline, mountain passes, and fertile valley floors all shaped where and how people chose to settle. The townland name Cloghers itself derives from the Irish clochaire, generally associated with stony ground or a stony place, suggesting a landscape that has long been defined by its underlying geology.