Where grander archaeological sites offer monuments and structures, a midden offers the residue of ordinary life: what people ate, what they broke, what they discarded without a second thought. The one uncovered at Burgagery-Lands in County Tipperary is no exception, and the picture it preserves is unexpectedly vivid.

Excavations in 1993, carried out under licence number 93E0094, reached organic layers sitting between 1.6 and 2.1 metres below ground. The deposits were very dark in colour and retained a strong organic smell even at that depth, a detail that speaks to how densely they had accumulated. Within them, excavators found animal bones, charcoal, oyster shells, hazelnut shells, blackberries, broken clay pipes, sherds of pottery, and strands of leather. Taken together, the archaeological evidence placed these layers in the late 1600s and early 1700s. That period, spanning the turbulent close of the seventeenth century and the cautious opening of the eighteenth, was a time of considerable disruption across Tipperary, and yet here, preserved in the earth, is evidence of people cooking, eating shellfish, cracking hazelnuts, smoking pipes, and getting on with the business of daily life. The oyster shells in particular are a small surprise, suggesting access to coastal trade networks at a remove from the sea.