Wedge tombs are the most numerous class of megalithic monument in Ireland, characterised by a gallery that is wider and higher at the entrance end and tapers toward the back, usually orientated toward the west or south-west. What distinguishes them from the grander passage tombs of the Boyne Valley or the court tombs common in the north-west is a certain plainness of ambition; they are intimate structures, built close to the ground, the stones arranged with a functional economy that has nonetheless outlasted almost every other human effort of their era.

The principal scholarly record for this tomb comes from Seán Ó Nualláin's survey of the megalithic tombs of County Sligo, published in 1989 as the fifth volume in a national survey series. Ó Nualláin's work was systematic and exhaustive, cataloguing monuments across the county and providing measured descriptions, photographs, and locational data for each site. County Sligo is unusually rich in megalithic remains, partly because of its geology and partly because communities here were active participants in the broader tradition of monument-building that spread across Atlantic Europe during the fourth and third millennia BC. The Kilsellagh tomb belongs to this wider pattern, though its specific dimensions, condition, and any surviving structural features are documented in Ó Nualláin's detailed fieldwork rather than in any secondary account.