Court tombs are among the earliest megalithic monuments in Ireland, characterised by an open semicircular or U-shaped forecourt of upright stones leading into one or more roofed burial chambers. They were places of communal burial and, most likely, ritual, distributed across the northern half of the island in considerable numbers.

The primary scholarly record for this structure comes from the survey work of Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, published in 1964 as part of the second volume of their Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, which catalogued monuments across County Mayo. De Valera and Ó Nualláin's systematic fieldwork in the mid-twentieth century documented hundreds of megalithic tombs across the country, many of which had received little or no formal attention before. Their Mayo volume remains a foundational reference for understanding the distribution and condition of these monuments across the west of Ireland.