Raths, or ringforts, are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the country, yet familiarity has done little to diminish how strange they feel when you encounter one in the field. These were the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, their raised earthen or stone walls offering a degree of protection for a farming family and their livestock. That so many have survived is a consequence partly of their solidity and partly of a folk belief, persistent well into the modern era, that disturbing a fairy fort invites misfortune.

The townland name Tullygarran derives from the Irish, with "tully" typically indicating a small hill or mound, a topographical detail that may reflect the slight elevation on which such enclosures were often deliberately sited. Ringforts in Kerry, as elsewhere in Munster, were frequently associated with the dairying economy of early medieval lordship, the enclosed space serving as a secure yard for cattle as much as a domestic settlement. Beyond its classification as a rath, a term generally applied to earthwork enclosures as distinct from the stone-built cashels more common in the west of the county, the specific history of this particular site remains, for now, largely unrecorded in publicly available sources.