Wedge tombs, so called because their gallery is wider and taller at the entrance end and tapers toward the back, are the most numerous type of megalithic tomb in Ireland and belong broadly to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age periods. That they appear in such numbers across the west of Ireland suggests a pattern of organised communal burial that archaeologists are still working to fully understand.

The primary scholarly record for this tomb comes from Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, whose Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume II, covering County Mayo, was published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1964. De Valera and Ó Nualláin's systematic catalogue of megalithic monuments across Ireland remains a foundational document in Irish prehistoric archaeology, and the Lettera tomb was among the Mayo examples they recorded. Beyond what that survey captured, the specific structural details and condition of the monument at the time of recording are held within that volume's documentation of the site.