Wedge tombs, the most numerous class of megalithic monument in Ireland, take their name from their characteristic shape: a gallery that narrows and lowers from front to back, typically aligned to face the setting sun in the west or south-west. They belong broadly to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, and the Burren contains a notable concentration of them, the thin soils and bare rock making ancient stone structures easier to spot than in more heavily cultivated parts of the country.

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 a foundational reference for the megalithic monuments of the region, and Parknabinnia is among the Clare tombs documented within it. De Valera in particular devoted much of his academic career to cataloguing and classifying these monuments, and the survey he co-authored brought a systematic rigour to structures that had often been recorded only piecemeal or not at all.