Wedge tombs, so called because their gallery tapers in both height and width from front to back, are the most numerous megalithic tomb type in Ireland, yet each individual example tends to attract far less attention than the more dramatic passage tombs or portal tombs that draw visitors to places like the Boyne Valley.

The principal scholarly record for this structure comes from Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, whose Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland covered County Mayo in its second volume, published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in 1964. De Valera and Ó Nualláin spent years methodically documenting megalithic monuments across the country, and their Mayo volume remains a foundational reference for the county's prehistoric funerary landscape. Mayo has a considerable concentration of wedge tombs, reflecting both the density of prehistoric settlement in the west of Ireland and the durability of the large limestone and sandstone slabs from which these structures were built. The tombs were used for collective burial, often over extended periods, and the wedge form is generally associated with communities of the period roughly between 2500 and 2000 BC, though dating varies by site.