Court tombs take their name from the open, semicircular or oval forecourt that typically fronts the burial gallery, a space thought to have served some kind of ceremonial function for the communities that built them. They are concentrated in the northern half of Ireland, and Mayo has a notable share of them, scattered across a landscape that was already ancient when the first historical records were being written.

The principal scholarly reference for this site is the Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume II, covering County Mayo, compiled by Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin and published in Dublin in 1964. That volume remains a foundational document for understanding the distribution and structural characteristics of these monuments across the county. Court tombs were collective burial places, their stone-lined galleries divided into chambers where the remains of the dead, sometimes cremated, were deposited over generations. The effort involved in their construction, the quarrying, transport, and raising of large stones without metal tools, speaks to the organisational capacity of Neolithic communities who are often underestimated in popular imagination.