Wedge tombs are the most numerous megalithic tomb type in Ireland, characterised by a gallery that narrows and lowers towards the back, typically oriented with the wider end facing west or south-west. They belong broadly to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, a period spanning roughly 2500 to 2000 BC, when communities across the island were raising these collective stone chambers, probably for burial and perhaps for ritual purposes tied to the agricultural landscape around them.

The principal scholarly record for this tomb comes from Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, whose Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland devoted its first volume, published in 1961, entirely to County Clare. That county warranted its own volume in part because of the sheer concentration of megalithic monuments there, a density that still makes Clare one of the more rewarding counties for anyone interested in prehistoric Ireland. De Valera and Ó Nualláin systematically catalogued and described these structures at a time when many had received little formal attention, and their work remains a foundational reference for the region's prehistoric archaeology.