These circular enclosures, known in Irish as raths, were the standard farmstead of early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of an earthen bank and ditch enclosing a family's home and outbuildings. Tens of thousands once existed across the island, and while many have been levelled by centuries of agriculture, a significant number survive, their raised rims still legible from the road or from the air.

Clare is particularly well furnished with such sites. The county's limestone landscape, parts of which were less intensively farmed than the richer soils elsewhere, allowed many earthworks to persist more or less intact. Raths of this kind were generally constructed between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, and their earthen banks, sometimes reinforced with stone, served as much as a social marker as a defensive one. Enclosing a homestead within a defined boundary was a statement of status and ownership in a society where cattle-wealth and land were closely bound together. The rath at Oughterard belongs to this long tradition, a piece of early medieval Clare that has endured simply by remaining where it was placed.