Wedge tombs are the most numerous of Ireland's megalithic tomb types, built during the late Neolithic and into the early Bronze Age, roughly between 2500 and 2000 BC. They take their name from their characteristic shape: a roofed, gallery-style chamber that is wider and taller at the entrance end and narrows toward the back, like a stone wedge driven into the ground. Most face broadly west or south-west, a consistent orientation whose full significance remains a matter of quiet debate among archaeologists.

The Berneens example is documented in the foundational survey of Clare's megalithic monuments, compiled by Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin and published in 1961 as the first volume of their Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. County Clare was chosen to open the series in part because it holds one of the densest concentrations of wedge tombs anywhere on the island, a reflection of the area's long prehistoric settlement. De Valera and Ó Nualláin's systematic fieldwork across the county catalogued dozens of such structures, placing each within a broader typological framework that is still used by researchers today. Berneens, though not among the better-known sites of the Burren or its fringes, forms part of that larger record of how thoroughly this part of Ireland was shaped by its earliest farming communities.