These structures, known variously as raths or ringforts, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead within one or more concentric earthen or stone banks. Tens of thousands once existed across the country, and a remarkable number survive, quietly embedded in field boundaries and pastureland, largely unnoticed by those passing by.

Ringforts were built and occupied primarily between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, serving as the domestic enclosures of farming families across the social spectrum, from modest smallholders to local lords. The bank and ditch arrangement offered a degree of protection for people, livestock, and goods, and the interior would have contained timber or wattle structures used as dwellings and outbuildings. In Clare, a county whose limestone terrain has preserved a great deal of early medieval archaeology, ringforts appear with considerable frequency, each one a faint outline of a household economy that functioned long before the Norman arrival reshaped Irish settlement patterns. The specific history of the Tonavoher example, including its condition, dimensions, and any associated finds or features, remains to be fully documented in the public record.