The flat peninsula on the southern shore of the Shannon estuary was chosen in the 1930s as the site for what would become Shannon Airport, and the surrounding landscape was reshaped accordingly. It is all the more striking, then, that somewhere in this terrain of runways and service roads there survives a graveyard old enough to have been recorded as an archaeological monument in its own right.

The name Rineanna derives from the Irish Rinn Eanaigh, meaning something close to "the point of the marsh" or "the marshy headland", which gives a reasonable impression of the low, wet ground that characterises this part of County Clare. Graveyards in such locations are frequently associated with early Christian foundations, where a small church or oratory once stood alongside the burial ground. Over time the church might vanish entirely, leaving only the enclosed ground where the dead were laid, sometimes continuing in use for centuries after any formal religious structure had disappeared. Whether that pattern holds here is not currently known from available sources, but the simple fact of the site's survival amid one of the most heavily developed stretches of the Clare shoreline is itself quietly remarkable.