A rath, as this type is known, is essentially a circular earthen enclosure, formed by one or more banks and ditches, that served as a farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They were the ordinary domestic architecture of their age, yet most have no written record attached to them, their occupants anonymous, their daily lives unrecoverable.

Ringforts of this kind were built by free farming families rather than kings or lords, and their earthworks were meant less for serious military defence than for defining a household boundary and keeping livestock secure. The bank, sometimes topped with a timber palisade, enclosed a space where houses, storage pits, and craft activity left traces that archaeologists have since learned to read carefully. In Connacht, where Killora lies, these sites are thickly distributed across the old pastoral landscape, often sited on slightly elevated ground with good drainage and long sight lines across open country. Many have been damaged or erased by centuries of agriculture, which makes those that survive even modest points of interest for anyone attentive to the shape of the land.