Megalithic tombs, built from large stones arranged into chambers and often covered by earthen or stone cairns, were constructed during the Neolithic period, roughly between 4000 and 2000 BC, and served as communal burial places as well as markers of territory and ancestry for the communities that raised them.

The principal scholarly record for this site comes from Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, whose Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume I, covering County Clare, was published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1961. That volume remains one of the foundational works in Irish prehistoric archaeology, systematically cataloguing the court tombs, portal tombs, wedge tombs, and other megalithic monuments scattered across the county. Clare has a particularly notable concentration of wedge tombs, the most common megalithic tomb type in Ireland, and many of them survive in varying states of preservation across the Burren and surrounding areas.