Megalithic tombs are ancient stone-built burial structures, typically dating to the Neolithic period, constructed using large upright stones and a capstone to form a chamber that was then used for communal burial. Mayo's landscape holds dozens of examples across several distinct types, and Belladooan's tomb is among those catalogued as part of the broader effort to document what remains.

The principal scholarly record for this site comes from 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. De Valera and Ó Nualláin spent years travelling the Irish countryside systematically recording these monuments, measuring chambers, mapping orientations, and noting the condition of surviving stonework. Their Mayo volume remains a foundational reference for understanding the distribution and typology of megalithic burial in the west of Ireland. The Belladooan tomb is one of the sites they documented, placing it within a tradition of monument-building that stretched across the landscape thousands of years before the earliest written records of Ireland.