It is recorded as an archaeological monument, which places it within a long continuum of Irish funerary sites, ranging from prehistoric cairns and early medieval cillíní, the informal graveyards used for unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground, through to post-medieval parish burial grounds. Which of these categories applies to Canrawer is, at present, unclear from what has been made publicly available.

The townland name itself, Canrawer, derives from the Irish and is characteristic of the west Galway landscape, a region dense with early Christian remains, field systems, and burial sites that reflect centuries of continuous, if often poorly documented, habitation. Burial grounds in this part of Connacht frequently occupy ground with much older significance, sometimes enclosing the remains of a church or chapel reduced now to a few foundation stones, or simply a patch of enclosed earth that local tradition maintained as a place of interment long after any formal religious structure had gone. Without more specific detail in the record, the precise character of this site remains genuinely open.