Raths, as they are commonly called in the Irish tradition, are the most numerous monument type in the country, with tens of thousands recorded across the island. They are the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, built to shelter a family, their livestock, and their small world against both the practical and the supernatural. Clare alone contains hundreds of them, ranging from well-preserved examples on open hillsides to barely visible traces swallowed by improved pasture or forestry.

The rath as a form was in use roughly from the early centuries of the first millennium through to around the twelfth century, though many remained in use or in folk memory long after that. Their circular shape was not merely practical; it carried social and cosmological weight in a society where the boundary between inside and outside, between the household and the wider uncertain world, mattered enormously. In later folklore, ringforts became associated with the sídhe, the supernatural otherworld beings of Irish tradition, and many survived precisely because farmers were reluctant to disturb them. That combination of genuine antiquity and accumulated folklore gives even an unremarkable-looking rath a certain weight in the ground.