Standing stones are among the most enigmatic survivors of prehistoric Ireland, raised as solitary uprights of shaped or unshaped rock, most dating from the Bronze Age, though some may be earlier or later. Their original purposes remain largely a matter of speculation, with theories ranging from boundary markers and assembly points to memorials and components of astronomical alignments. What is consistent is their stubborn persistence: they have outlasted almost every other trace of the people who put them there.

Latoon is a small rural townland in Clare, a county with a notable concentration of prehistoric monuments, shaped in large part by the same limestone geology that produces the Burren's extraordinary karst terrain to the north. Standing stones in this region are often found in agricultural land, sometimes incorporated into later field boundaries, sometimes standing in isolation in the middle of a field with no obvious relationship to any other known feature. The particular history of this stone, its dimensions, its orientation, and whatever local tradition or folklore may have attached itself to it over the centuries, remains to be more fully documented.