Passage tombs are among the oldest monumental structures in Ireland, typically dating to the Neolithic period, roughly 4000 to 3200 BCE. They take their name from a defining architectural feature: a stone-lined passage leading from the exterior into a central burial chamber, the whole structure usually covered by a round cairn of earth and rubble.

The principal survey authority for this site is Seán Ó Nualláin's volume on County Sligo, published in 1989 as part of the five-volume Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. Ó Nualláin spent decades cataloguing these monuments across the country, and his Sligo volume remains the foundational reference for the county's extraordinary concentration of prehistoric funerary architecture. Carrowhubbuck sits within a wider landscape that includes some of Ireland's most significant Neolithic complexes, and while it may not carry the fame of nearby Carrowmore or Knocknarea, its inclusion in Ó Nualláin's meticulous survey places it firmly within that remarkable tradition of monument-building communities who shaped this part of the west of Ireland thousands of years before recorded history.