Exposed in the scarp, a thin band of oyster and winkle shells mixed with charcoal marks what was once a midden, a refuse heap left by people who ate, cooked, and discarded their meals at this spot, layer by layer, until the accumulation became a record. The deposit stretches only three metres in length and between twenty and thirty centimetres thick, and sits beneath roughly sixty centimetres of soil and scraw, the compacted surface turf common to this part of Connaught. It is the kind of site that most walkers would step over without a second thought.

A midden is essentially a kitchen midden, the compressed leavings of shellfish meals, sometimes spanning generations of use at the same location. The dark charcoal band running through this one suggests fires were lit nearby, and the shell species present, oyster and winkle, point to a coastal community making use of what the bay provided. The Fakeeragh site offers no firm dating from the available record, but shell middens along the west coast of Ireland range from Mesolithic through to post-medieval periods, and their position eroding from a cliff face is a reminder that the archaeological record here is not static. The sea and the weather are ongoing forces, and each year a little more of the deposit is likely lost.