Ringforts, known in Irish as raths or lios depending on their construction, were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. A family or small kin group would have lived within the circular earthen bank, using it less as a military fortification and more as a boundary marker, a livestock enclosure, and a statement of presence in the land.

Clare is particularly dense with these survivals, its geology and land-use history having preserved many that elsewhere were levelled for tillage or swallowed by development. The county's ringforts range from modest single-banked enclosures to more elaborate multivallate examples, and the presence of one at Urlan More places it within that long thread of early Christian rural settlement that shaped the Irish countryside long before the arrival of Norman castles or planned towns. Without more detailed records currently available for this specific site, the particulars of its size, condition, and any associated features remain unconfirmed, but the structure of early Irish farming life it represents is well understood. Families in such enclosures would have kept cattle as their primary measure of wealth, farmed small plots of cereal crops, and left traces in the soil that archaeologists still read today through earthwork survey and occasional excavation.