A wedge tomb is a Neolithic or early Bronze Age burial monument, typically a roofed stone gallery that narrows and lowers toward the rear, giving it a distinctive wedge-shaped profile when viewed from the side. They were built by farming communities somewhere between four and five thousand years ago, and Clare's limestone uplands seem to have been particularly favoured ground for their construction.

The principal scholarly reference for this tomb is Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin's Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume I, which covered County Clare and was published in 1961. De Valera was among the first to systematically catalogue and classify wedge tombs as a distinct monument type, distinguishing them from other megalithic forms that had previously been grouped loosely together. Their work brought a degree of rigour to the study of these monuments that had been largely absent before, and the Kilvoydan example was recorded as part of that broader county-wide effort.