This particular structure is the eastern of the two, its companion recorded separately nearby. Court tombs are among the oldest surviving built structures in Ireland, dating broadly to the Neolithic period, and take their name from the open, usually semicircular forecourt of upright stones that precedes the roofed burial chambers. The forecourt is thought to have served a ceremonial function, a place where the living conducted rituals in the presence of the dead.

The survey record for this tomb draws on the fieldwork of Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, whose second volume of the Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1964, remains a foundational reference for Mayo's prehistoric monuments. De Valera and Ó Nualláin spent years documenting court tombs across the country, and their work brought systematic attention to sites that had previously been recorded only patchily or not at all. The fact that Carrowkilleen contains two such tombs in proximity makes it a site of particular interest to anyone trying to understand how Neolithic communities organised themselves across the landscape and how they chose, or returned to, specific places for the burial of their dead.