These circular enclosures, known in Irish as raths, were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches that enclosed a family's dwelling and perhaps a few outbuildings. They are among the most common archaeological monuments in the country, with tens of thousands recorded, yet each one occupies a specific patch of ground that somebody once chose deliberately, for drainage, for visibility, for proximity to water or fertile soil.

Clare is particularly well furnished with such sites. The county sits at a crossroads of sorts in Irish prehistory and early history, its limestone plains and coastal edges having supported settled farming communities since the Neolithic. By the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, the rath had become the defining unit of rural life across Ireland. The enclosing bank was not primarily a military defence but a boundary, a statement of ownership and household order, keeping livestock in and wolves or opportunistic neighbours out. Inside, a family might have lived in a timber or wattle-and-daub house, kept cattle, and paid tribute to a local lord whose own rath stood perhaps a hillside away.