Known in Irish as a ráth, a ringfort of this type typically consists of one or more concentric banks and ditches enclosing a roughly circular area, and would originally have served as a defended farmstead during the early medieval period, broadly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Ireland has somewhere in the region of forty to fifty thousand recorded examples, making them among the most common archaeological monuments in the country, yet each one sits in its own particular patch of ground, shaped by local topography and whoever once decided this was the right place to build a life.

The townland name Inchincummer hints at something older beneath the placename itself. "Inish" or "Inch" derivations in Irish townland names often suggest a riverside meadow or a slightly raised area of ground near water, and Kerry is a county where the density of early medieval settlement left its mark across the landscape in earthworks, field boundaries, and placenames that have shifted only slightly over centuries. Ringforts in this part of Munster tend to occupy well-drained rises with good views of the surrounding terrain, a pattern that reflects both the practical needs of early farming communities and a degree of social display, since the effort of building a substantial earthen enclosure was itself a statement of status and permanence.