Known in Irish as a rath, a ringfort is typically a roughly circular area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, built during the early medieval period, roughly between 500 and 1000 AD, and used primarily as a farmstead. They are so numerous in the Irish countryside that they have shaped field boundaries, place names, and local folklore for over a millennium, yet individually they are rarely examined in any detail.

The Knockrower example carries the classification of rath, placing it among the earthwork variety rather than the stone-built type known as a cashel, which tends to appear more frequently in the rocky terrain further west along the Kerry peninsula. Beyond its location and type, the documentary record for this particular site is thin. What can be said with confidence is that ringforts of this kind were domestic rather than military in function. The enclosing bank provided a degree of security for livestock and family, and the interior would typically have contained one or more timber or wattle structures used for habitation and storage. Some raths were also associated with souterrains, underground stone-lined passages that served as cool storage or places of refuge in times of danger.