A shallow scarp in the grassland traces the rough outline of what was once a rath, the common Irish ringfort type that served as a farmstead enclosure during the early medieval period, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth century. Thousands of these roughly circular earthworks once dotted the Irish countryside, and while many have survived in reasonable condition, this one has not. It measures approximately 25.6 metres north to south and 23.5 metres east to west, which would have made it a modest but not unusual example of the type. Today it registers mainly as a change in ground level rather than anything more legible.

The damage here is not the slow erosion of centuries alone. Extensive quarrying has eaten into the site from the east-south-east around through the south and west, removing a substantial arc of whatever bank or boundary material once defined the enclosure on those sides. Quarrying of local stone for building and field walls was a practical reality across rural Galway for generations, and archaeological sites, however ancient, were rarely treated as off-limits when usable material was close at hand. The result at Gortarica is a ringfort that can still be identified and measured, but whose original form can only be inferred rather than seen.