Megalithic tombs, a broad category covering court tombs, portal tombs, passage tombs, and wedge tombs, were constructed during the Neolithic period, roughly five to three thousand years before the common era, and served as collective burial places as well as likely focal points for ritual and communal life. Mayo has an unusually dense concentration of them, and Knockananny represents one thread in that much longer story.

The principal scholarly record for this tomb comes from the fieldwork of Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, whose Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume II, covering County Mayo, was published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1964. That survey remains a foundational document for understanding the distribution and typology of these monuments across the county, and the Knockananny tomb was recorded as part of that systematic effort to catalogue what survives above ground across Mayo's townlands. De Valera and Ó Nualláin's work across multiple volumes brought rigour and geographical scope to a field that had previously relied on more scattered and inconsistent documentation.