A rath, as this type of monument is also called, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. The enclosing bank and ditch were less about military defence than about demarcating a family's space, keeping livestock in and wolves out, and signalling a degree of social standing to anyone passing by. Ireland has somewhere in the region of forty to fifty thousand surviving examples, making them among the most common field monuments in the country, and yet each one sits in its own particular soil, its own particular silence.

Drumellihy is a small rural townland in Clare, a county whose limestone topography preserves archaeological features with unusual fidelity. The very name Drumellihy likely derives from Irish, with the element droim, meaning a ridge or raised back of land, suggesting the kind of slightly elevated ground that early farmers preferred for settlement: well-drained, with long views across the surrounding terrain. Raths in this part of Munster were often the homesteads of free farmers, the bóaire class of early Irish society, and the circular earthen bank that defined the enclosure would originally have contained a timber hall or small group of buildings, perhaps a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage used for storage or as a place of refuge. Over the centuries, many such enclosures passed into folklore as the dwelling places of the sídhe, the supernatural inhabitants of the otherworld, and this association protected countless ringforts from being levelled long after their original purpose was forgotten.