The rath at Lisheenbaun in County Kerry is one such site, quietly occupying its patch of ground while the wider landscape carries on around it. A rath, to use the Irish term, is a circular enclosure typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and used primarily as a defended farmstead for a single family or small household.

The place name itself carries a little of the site's character. Lisheenbaun derives from the Irish, likely combining a diminutive of lios, meaning a fort or enclosure, with bán, meaning white or fair. The lios and the rath describe essentially the same kind of monument, and the doubling of that idea in the townland name suggests the enclosure was prominent enough, and old enough, to work its way into local geography. Kerry contains a high density of such monuments, a reflection of the county's pastoral farming history during the early medieval centuries, when these enclosures served as the basic unit of rural settlement across Munster.