The name Killow itself carries the echo of the Irish word "cill", meaning a church or monastic cell, which suggests that this ground has been set apart for the dead, and perhaps for worship, since early Christian times at least. That association between a place-name and a buried history of use is common enough across Ireland, but it gives a site like this a particular kind of weight, the sense that the land has been holding something for a very long time.

Beyond the place-name, the documentary record for the Killow graveyard is, for now, largely silent. What can be said is that graveyards of this type, often described as disused or "cillin" sites depending on their character, frequently mark the locations of early medieval churches or enclosures, some of them predating the formal parish system that took shape in Ireland during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The presence of a recorded monument here at all indicates that the site has been identified and noted as archaeologically significant, even if the full detail of what survives above or below ground remains to be set out in any accessible form.