It sits in that particular category of Irish sites that are known to exist, are considered worth preserving, and are nonetheless largely undescribed, a gap that is more common than one might expect given how thoroughly much of the Irish landscape has been surveyed and catalogued.

Mayo itself is limestone country in many of its lowland and mid-county stretches, and caves in such geology can range from modest solution hollows to more extensive karst features shaped over millennia by slightly acidic groundwater dissolving the bedrock. Caves of this kind have served many purposes across Irish prehistory and history, from seasonal shelter and the disposal of the dead to the storage of goods and, in later centuries, use as places of refuge. Whether Bunnadober's cave was ever put to any of these uses, and when it may first have attracted human attention, remains unrecorded in publicly available sources. The formal designation as a monument suggests that someone, at some point, considered it archaeologically relevant, but the detail behind that judgement has not yet been made accessible.