Court tombs, sometimes called court cairns, are distinguished by a semicircular or oval forecourt of upright stones at their entrance, an open ceremonial space that prehistoric communities likely used for ritual activity before the dead were placed in the roofed gallery beyond. They are among the earliest megalithic structures in Ireland, generally dated to the fourth millennium BC, and they cluster particularly thickly across the northern half of the country, making Mayo one of their heartlands.

The primary record for this site draws on the fieldwork of Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, whose systematic survey of Mayo's megalithic tombs, published in 1964 as the second volume of their Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, remains the foundational reference for monuments of this type across the county. De Valera and Ó Nualláin documented hundreds of tombs across Ireland over several decades, recording structural details, orientations, and states of preservation with a rigour that has made their volumes indispensable to subsequent researchers. The Mullaghawny tomb enters the wider record through that survey, situated in a part of Mayo where the drumlin and bogland topography has both preserved and obscured ancient monuments in roughly equal measure.