The example at Cloghbrack Far, in County Mayo, is one such place: a rath, which is the Irish term for a ringfort, typically consisting of a roughly circular area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and used during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, as a farmstead or defended homestead for a family of some local standing.

Ringforts of this type were the basic unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland. The enclosing bank, built from the soil thrown up when the ditch was dug, would have defined the domestic space within, sheltering a family, their animals, and their outbuildings from both the elements and opportunistic livestock raids. Mayo, with its wide boggy plains and drumlin-scattered landscape, retains a considerable number of these earthworks, many of them surviving because the land around them was never intensively ploughed. Cloghbrack Far itself is a townland name that carries traces of Irish in its bones: "cloghbrack" suggests a connection to the Irish cloch bhreac, meaning speckled stone, a topographical detail that hints at the character of the local ground. Beyond that, the documentary record for this particular site is presently thin, and specific dates, dimensions, or excavation findings are not available.

For anyone with a particular interest in early medieval settlement archaeology, the wider Mayo landscape repays patient attention. Ringforts in this part of the west often survive as low, grass-covered banks that are most legible in low winter sunlight or from slightly elevated ground, when shadow throws their circular outlines into relief.