Court tombs are among the earliest megalithic monuments in Ireland, built by Neolithic farming communities roughly five to six thousand years ago. The defining feature is an unroofed, semicircular or oval forecourt formed from standing stones, which opened onto one or more roofed burial galleries. The forecourt is thought to have served a ceremonial function, a kind of open-air stage for rituals connected with the dead, before the enclosed chambers where remains were deposited.

The tomb at Carrowculleen is documented in Seán Ó Nualláin's authoritative Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume V, which covers County Sligo and was published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1989. Sligo is unusually well furnished with court tombs, and Ó Nualláin's painstaking county-by-county survey remains the primary scholarly reference for monuments of this type across Ireland. The concentration of such structures in the northwest reflects both the suitability of the landscape for early agriculture and, perhaps, the preferences of particular Neolithic communities who settled and farmed these territories over many generations.