That a route through the landscape should earn this designation is less surprising than it might seem. In Ireland, ancient roads and trackways range from Bronze Age wooden causeways preserved in bogland to the great early medieval highways described in Brehon law, some of which remained in use for centuries before modern infrastructure erased or absorbed them. The fact that this particular route in Carrowmore has been flagged as archaeologically significant suggests it may preserve evidence of an earlier pattern of movement through the landscape, one that predates the modern road network and hints at how people and livestock once navigated this part of Mayo.

Carrowmore as a placename derives from the Irish An Cheathrú Mhór, meaning the big quarter-land, a unit of land division with roots in the Gaelic landholding system. Mayo itself is a county with a dense archaeological record, from the megalithic field systems of the Céide Fields on the north coast to the pilgrimage mountain of Croagh Patrick to the west. Roads and trackways of the kind recorded here were often associated with seasonal cattle movements, known as booleying, or with access to common land, churches, and markets. Without more detailed information available at this time, the precise age, form, and extent of the Carrowmore trackway remain unclear.