A midden, at its simplest, is a rubbish heap, the accumulated cast-offs of a community's daily meals: shells, fish bones, animal remains, and the occasional lost object. What looks like refuse is, to an archaeologist, a layered record of diet, season, trade, and settlement.

The Inishkea islands were inhabited for a very long time, with evidence of early Christian activity and traces of occupation reaching back into prehistory. Communities living close to the sea and dependent on it for survival left behind exactly the kind of dense shellfish and bone deposits that middens preserve so well. The Atlantic shoreline provided abundant raw material, and the compacted remains of countless meals can survive for millennia in the right conditions, particularly where coastal soils are thin and undisturbed. Inis Gé Thuaidh, uninhabited since its population was evacuated following a drowning tragedy in 1927, has been largely left alone since, which may partly explain why such a deposit remains identifiable on the island at all.

The island is accessible only by boat from the Mullet Peninsula, and landings depend on sea conditions. There is no permanent infrastructure on either Inishkea island today, and visitors should be prepared for a crossing that is genuinely weather-dependent. The midden itself is a quiet, undemonstrative feature in a landscape that rewards patient looking.