These structures date broadly to the fourth millennium BC, making Creevykeel the work of farming communities who arrived in Ireland thousands of years before the pyramids were built in Egypt. What sets court tombs apart from other megalithic forms is that forecourt, a communal space that seems to have been designed for ceremony or ritual rather than burial alone, suggesting these monuments were as much about the living as the dead.

The principal survey reference for Creevykeel is Seán Ó Nualláin's volume on County Sligo, published as part of the comprehensive Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland in 1989. Ó Nualláin's work documented the tomb's layout and condition as part of a systematic effort to record megalithic structures across the country, and Creevykeel figures among the most complete and legible examples in the Sligo corpus. The site is broadly consistent with the classic full-court form, in which large upright stones define an oval forecourt that narrows into a roofed burial gallery, the whole structure oriented with some deliberateness in the landscape.