These circular enclosures, known in Irish as raths, were the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a raised earthen bank and ditch enclosing a farmstead. Tens of thousands survive across the island in varying states of preservation, and the one at Drummindoo is among the quieter members of that company, recorded but not yet widely documented in any publicly accessible form.

Ringforts were constructed and occupied roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, though many were reused or mythologised long after. They were not forts in any military sense but farmsteads, the homes of farming families of middling social rank, their livestock kept safe inside the enclosure at night. The earthen bank served as much to signal status and define territory as to provide defence. In Connacht, where the land has kept more of its older character than many parts of Ireland, these enclosures are a recurring presence in the fields. Drummindoo itself is a small townland in Mayo, and like many such places its name preserves older layers of meaning, the Gaelic landscape nomenclature that attached itself to hills, hollows, and boundaries long before any map was drawn.