A rath, as this type of monument is commonly called, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically dating from around the fifth to the twelfth century. The enclosing bank and ditch were less about military defence than about defining a boundary: a farmyard wall writ large in earth, marking the home and small holding of a farming family of some local standing.

Ringforts of this kind are among the most numerous field monuments in the Irish countryside, yet each one represents a particular household, a particular place in a local hierarchy, and a particular patch of ground that someone once considered worth enclosing and defending socially if not militarily. Kerry has a high density of surviving examples, partly because the county's pastoral land use has allowed earthworks to persist where tillage elsewhere might have levelled them. The townland name Cloonalour itself is likely derived from the Irish, the element "cluain" meaning a meadow or pasture, which is itself the kind of setting where early medieval farming communities tended to establish themselves, close to workable land and reliable water.