Megalithic tombs are collective burial structures raised during the Neolithic period, typically between roughly 4000 and 2500 BC, and they take several forms across Ireland, including court tombs, portal tombs, passage tombs, and wedge tombs. Clare is particularly rich in wedge tombs, the most westerly and among the latest of the megalithic traditions, though without fuller detail it is difficult to say with certainty which type the Elmhill example represents.

The principal scholarly record for this monument comes from the work of Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, whose Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume I, covering County Clare, was published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1961. De Valera was one of the most systematic fieldworkers of Irish prehistoric monuments in the twentieth century, and the Clare volume, the first in what became a multi-volume national survey, set the standard for how such structures were catalogued and described. That this tomb found a place in their survey confirms it was field-verified and considered sufficiently intact or legible to warrant inclusion alongside the county's better-known megalithic sites.