These structures, known variously as raths or ringforts depending on their construction, were the most common form of rural settlement in Ireland from roughly the sixth to the twelfth century. A rath typically consisted of one or more concentric earthen banks and ditches, thrown up to define and defend a family's living space, with timber buildings inside. Tens of thousands once existed across the island, and a considerable number survive, many of them so thoroughly absorbed into field boundaries and hillsides that they go unnoticed by people passing daily within a short distance.

The townland name Luffertan places this site within the broader archaeological landscape of Sligo, a county with a remarkably dense concentration of prehistoric and early historic monuments, from the megalithic cemeteries of the Carrowmore basin to the more modest earthworks scattered across its interior farmland. Raths of this kind rarely announce themselves dramatically. Their interest lies partly in what they represent, a settled, agricultural, and socially stratified world that was already ancient when the Normans arrived, and partly in the way they persist, worn down but still legible, in the ordinary countryside around them.