Passage tombs of this type consist of a stone-lined corridor leading to a central chamber, the whole originally covered by a cairn of stones or earth, and were used for the collective burial of the dead, sometimes over many generations.

The principal scholarly record for this tomb comes from Seán Ó Nualláin's Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume V, covering County Sligo, published in 1989 by the Stationery Office in Dublin. Ó Nualláin's systematic survey of the Carrowmore complex documented the arrangement of the tombs across the low-lying glacial landscape, noting the characteristic boulder circles that surround many of the monuments and the dolmenic chambers at their centres. The site is a National Monument in State care, which places it under formal legal protection and means the surrounding land is managed with the monuments' preservation in mind. Carrowmore as a whole has attracted considerable archaeological attention since the late twentieth century, with excavations revealing cremated bone and other material pointing to activity in the Neolithic period, making these among the earliest megalithic constructions yet identified in Ireland.