The rath at Nohaval in County Kerry is one such site, a circular enclosure of the kind that served as a farmstead or defended homestead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. A rath, to be precise, is the earthen version of these enclosures, defined by a raised bank and an accompanying ditch, as distinct from cashels, which are built from stone and more typical of the rocky western seaboard.

Kerry has an unusually dense concentration of both types, partly because the county's pastoral land use over subsequent centuries left many of them undisturbed. Nohaval, a townland name derived from the Irish meaning "new orchard" or "new apple grove", sits in a county where placenames frequently preserve traces of land use and ownership stretching back far beyond the Norman period. The ringfort here would originally have sheltered a farming family of middling social standing, with the enclosing bank offering protection for livestock and perhaps a small cluster of timber or wattle buildings within.