These tombs, constructed from large stone slabs to create a burial chamber, were built by Neolithic communities typically somewhere between four and six thousand years ago, and Slievemore has long been understood as a place of considerable archaeological depth.

The mountain and its surroundings form one of the more densely layered archaeological zones in the west of Ireland. Slievemore is already well known for its deserted village, a long street of roofless stone cottages that speaks to both pre-Famine settlement patterns and the practice of transhumance, the seasonal movement of people and livestock between lowland and upland pasture. That a megalithic tomb exists somewhere on the same mountain is entirely in keeping with the character of the place; Achill was inhabited, used, and buried in long before the medieval or early modern periods that dominate most popular accounts of Irish history. The precise nature of this particular tomb, whether it belongs to the court, portal, or wedge tradition, each a distinct architectural form developed across different periods of the Neolithic and Bronze Age, is not currently a matter of detailed public record.