A cromlech, in the Irish context, generally refers to a megalithic tomb structure in which large upright stones support a substantial capstone, the whole arrangement once buried beneath an earthen or stone mound that has long since eroded away, leaving the bare skeleton exposed to the sky.

The principal scholarly record for this site comes from Seán Ó Nualláin's Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume V, covering County Sligo, published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1989. Ó Nualláin's systematic county-by-county survey remains one of the foundational catalogues of Irish prehistoric architecture, and its inclusion of the Fortland example places the monument within a broader pattern of megalithic activity across Sligo, a county that also contains some of the most extensively studied passage tomb complexes in the world. The Fortland cromlech represents the quieter, less-visited end of that spectrum, a single structure in an agricultural townland rather than a monument set within a managed heritage landscape.