A rath, or ringfort, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more circular earthen banks and ditches. They were the basic unit of rural life in Ireland between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, and an estimated 45,000 or so survive in various states of preservation across the country. The one at Rinshinna is among them, noted and numbered, present on the record if not yet fully described.

Beyond its classification and location, the available detail on this particular site is thin. What can be said with confidence is that raths of this type were generally the homesteads of farming families, the banks serving as a boundary and a modest defence against livestock theft or opportunistic raiding rather than any serious military threat. Inside, a family would have kept their animals close at night and gone about the rhythms of early medieval agricultural life. The earthworks at Rinshinna belong to that world, even if the specific history of who built them, when exactly, and what became of the settlement has not yet been documented in any accessible form.