Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a raised circular area enclosed by one or more banks and ditches. They served as farmsteads for families of varying social rank, and many thousands of them survive across the country in various states of preservation. That so many remain is partly a matter of folklore: local tradition long held that disturbing a rath brought bad luck, a belief that inadvertently protected thousands of sites from the plough.

Inchincummer itself is a small Kerry townland, and like much of the southwest, this part of Ireland was densely settled during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. The rath at Inchincummer belongs to that broad and populous chapter of Irish rural life, when the landscape was divided into countless small agricultural territories, each with its own enclosed homestead. The name Inchincummer likely derives from Irish, though the precise etymology is a matter for specialists. What is clear is that the presence of a rath here places this patch of Kerry ground within a well-documented but endlessly varied pattern of settlement that once stretched from one end of the island to the other.

The documentary record for this particular site remains sparse for now, which means the earthworks themselves are the primary source of information available to anyone who goes looking. Visitors to ringfort sites in Kerry generally find that the best approach is simply to read the ground carefully, noting the curve of the bank, the depth of any surviving ditch, and the way the enclosure relates to the surrounding topography. A rath positioned on a gentle slope or with a clear sightline across a valley was rarely placed there by accident.