Megalithic tombs are collective burial monuments built during the Neolithic period, roughly five to six thousand years ago, typically using large upright stones capped with a massive horizontal slab. They were constructed long before written record, which means almost everything we understand about them comes from their physical remains and the archaeological work done to document those remains.

The most substantial scholarly attention this site has received came through the work of Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, whose Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume II, covering County Mayo, was published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1964. That volume remains a foundational reference for understanding the distribution and typology of these monuments across the county, cataloguing structures that might otherwise go entirely unrecorded. Mayo has a notably high concentration of megalithic monuments, a reflection of the dense Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement that once occupied land now given over to bog and rough grazing.