Barrows are burial mounds, typically raised earthen or stone structures covering the remains of the dead, and they appear across Ireland in forms that range from the modest to the elaborate. They belong to a tradition stretching back through the Bronze Age and beyond, marking the places where communities chose to inter their dead and, in doing so, to leave something permanent on the land.

Carrowkeel, as a place name, derives from the Irish An Cheathrú Chaol, meaning the narrow quarter-land, a reference to the old Gaelic system of land division. Townlands bearing this name appear in several Irish counties, and Mayo has its share. Beyond the presence of the barrow itself, the specific details of this particular monument, its dimensions, its condition, its relationship to other features in the surrounding landscape, remain to be fully documented in the public record.