153 is one of many such structures scattered across this low drumlin landscape. What makes Carrowmore collectively so arresting is the sheer density of the remains: dolmens, boulder circles, and passage tombs, the latter being monuments in which a stone-lined corridor leads to a central burial chamber, all arranged across open ground in a way that suggests the entire area functioned as a ritual landscape rather than a series of isolated burial sites.

The principal scholarly account of this site comes from Seán Ó Nualláin's Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume V, covering County Sligo, published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1989. Ó Nualláin's survey was a systematic effort to document and classify the megalithic monuments of the entire country, and Sligo, with Carrowmore at its centre and the great cairn of Knocknarea visible on the ridge to the west, represented some of the most significant material he encountered. Passage tombs as a class are generally associated with Neolithic communities and are thought to date from roughly 4000 to 3200 BC, though excavations at Carrowmore have produced radiocarbon dates suggesting some monuments there may be among the earliest of their type anywhere in Atlantic Europe.

The site is in State care, which means access and conservation are managed at a national level. Carrowmore as a whole is open to visitors during the summer months, with a visitor centre on site that provides context for the wider complex. The individual monuments are distributed across fields in the surrounding area, some on public land and some visible from nearby roads and paths, and the flat terrain makes orientation relatively straightforward once you have a sense of the overall layout.