Carrowmore is not a single monument but a field of them, a cluster of passage tombs and related structures that has been quietly reordering what archaeologists thought they knew about the timeline of Neolithic Ireland. Passage tombs are a type of megalithic chamber tomb in which a stone-lined corridor leads to a central burial space, the whole thing typically covered by a cairn or earthen mound. At Carrowmore, these structures appear in such numbers and in such proximity to one another that the site reads less like a collection of individual graves and more like a deliberately organised ceremonial landscape.

The definitive scholarly account of the site remains Seán Ó Nualláin's survey volume on County Sligo, published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1989 as part of his broader Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. That work documented the monuments with a rigour that helped establish Carrowmore's significance not just locally but within the wider European Neolithic record. The site is a National Monument in State care, which reflects both its archaeological importance and the degree to which it has required formal protection over the years, since many of the tombs suffered damage or removal of stones long before systematic recording began.