The prefix "rath" points directly to what lies there: a ringfort, one of the thousands of roughly circular earthwork enclosures built across Ireland during the early medieval period, broadly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. These structures, formed from one or more banks of earth and accompanying ditches, served as farmsteads and enclosures for livestock, and occasionally as the defended residences of local lords. That the townland was named after this particular example suggests it was once a feature prominent enough to anchor the identity of the land around it.

Ringforts are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with estimates running to around 40,000 surviving examples across the island, yet each one carries its own local history shaped by who built it, how long it was in use, and what happened to it afterward. The rath at Ratheskin belongs to a landscape of Mayo that was densely settled in early Christian times, when the rath was the standard unit of rural life. Many such sites were later absorbed into field systems, built over, or simply eroded by centuries of agriculture, leaving only a low rise in a pasture or a slight curve in a field boundary to hint at what once stood there.