The four criteria for assessing class importance apply to D-shaped barrows as follows:
- Period (currency): Long-lived. The tradition of building and using D-shaped barrows appears, on present evidence, to span the middle Neolithic period, a total of perhaps five or six centuries.
- Rarity: Very rare. At present only two or three D-shaped barrows are known.
- Diversity (form): Low. The small number of known sites precludes the recognition of much diversity within the class at present.
- Period (representativity): High. The number of of middle Neolithic monument classes known is not great, and D-shaped barrows represent one of a fairly restricted range of funerary monuments of the period.
Assigning scores to these criteria following the system set out in the Monument Evaluation Manual, D-shaped barrows yield a Class Importance Value of 42. This lies over two-thirds of the way up the range of possible values (max.= 64) emphasizing, among other things, the great rarity of this class. It must also be noted that Diversity (form) is very difficult to evaluate with a class as small as this one. Because of the small size of the class it is likely that the discovery of further examples will extend some of the characteristics of the class as a whole.