The word "cromlech" is an older, now largely retired term for what archaeologists today would typically call a portal tomb or dolmen, those striking arrangements of upright stones supporting a large capstone that were built during the Neolithic period, generally between around 4000 and 2500 BC. The name Cloghogle itself is Irish in origin, and the site's double designation, both the anglicised term and the Gaelic place-name, hints at how long this structure has been woven into local consciousness, long enough to acquire a name of its own rather than simply being "the old stones on the hill".

The monument holds the status of a national monument in State guardianship, which places it among the legally protected prehistoric sites of Ireland. The principal scholarly record for it comes from the work of Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, whose Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume II, covering County Mayo, was published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1964. That volume remains a foundational reference for megalithic sites across the county, cataloguing portal tombs, court tombs, passage tombs, and wedge tombs with a rigour that has kept it in use for decades. Cloghogle appears there as part of a broader picture of Neolithic activity in Mayo, a county that contains a remarkable concentration of prehistoric monuments relative to its size.