Wedge tombs, so called because their gallery is typically wider and taller at the entrance end and narrows towards the back like a wedge when viewed from above or in profile, are generally associated with the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, broadly spanning the period from around 2500 to 2000 BC. They are particularly concentrated in the west of Ireland, and Mayo contains a notable share of surviving examples.

The tomb at Callow is documented in the foundational survey compiled by 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 key reference for understanding the distribution and structural variation of megalithic monuments across the county. De Valera and Ó Nualláin spent years systematically cataloguing these structures at a time when many had received little formal archaeological attention, and their work brought a number of Mayo tombs, including this one, into the scholarly record in a more rigorous way than had previously been attempted.