Shell middens in particular, common along Ireland's Atlantic coastline, preserve the accumulated domestic waste of communities who lived close to the shore, sometimes for generations: oyster and limpet shells, animal bones, charred seeds, broken pottery, and occasionally human remains. What looks like a rubbish heap to a casual eye is, to an archaeologist, a layered archive of diet, season, and daily life.

The Luffertan site sits within a part of Sligo that has long attracted archaeological interest, a county whose landscape holds megalithic tombs, passage graves, and prehistoric field systems of international significance. Middens in this region can range from Mesolithic deposits laid down roughly eight or nine thousand years ago to more recent early medieval accumulations, and the distinction matters enormously for understanding how and when people settled and used a particular stretch of coast or inland ground. Without further detail specific to this site, it is not possible to say which period the Luffertan midden belongs to, or how extensive the deposit may be.