Court tombs, sometimes called court cairns, are among the oldest megalithic structures on the island, typically dating to around 4000 BCE or earlier. They take their name from the open, roughly semicircular forecourt of upright stones that leads into a roofed gallery, a layout that suggests communal ritual as much as burial, though the two were likely inseparable in the minds of those who built them.

The principal survey of this monument appears in Seán Ó Nualláin's volume on County Sligo, published in 1989 as part of his comprehensive multi-volume survey of Ireland's megalithic tombs. Ó Nualláin spent decades systematically documenting these structures across the country, and his Sligo volume remains the standard reference for the county's prehistoric monuments. Sligo as a whole is unusually dense with Neolithic remains, a landscape that includes the celebrated passage tomb cemetery on Carrowmore and the great cairn of Knocknarea, so a court tomb at Gortnahoula fits into a broader pattern of prehistoric activity in the region, even if this particular example sits well outside the more visited clusters.