Midden, Cartoorbeg, Co. Galway

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Settlement Sites

Midden, Cartoorbeg, Co. Galway

Along the northern shoreline of Omey Island in Connemara, a stretch of sand dune is slowly giving up what people left behind.

Protruding from the eroding face of the dune is a midden, roughly 55 metres long, composed almost entirely of limpet shells, with lesser quantities of razor clam and periwinkle shells mixed through it. A midden is, essentially, a prehistoric or early historic rubbish deposit, the accumulated remains of meals and daily life. Flecks of charcoal visible within the shell deposit suggest that fires were lit nearby, and that whoever ate these shellfish was doing so in a place of some habitual activity rather than in passing. What makes this site quietly arresting is not any single find but the sheer density of accumulated discard, and the fact that erosion is making it visible at all.

Omey Island is a tidal island, accessible on foot across the strand at low water, and its shoreline has long been shaped by wind and shifting sand. The dunes here have been heavily eroded, a process made visible by old field posts that now dangle unsupported in front of the exposed dune face, their ground long since undercut and gone. The midden itself is only intermittently exposed, obscured in places by the recent collapse of overhanging sod and sand. It does not sit alone. Another midden lies approximately 90 metres to the west, and two further examples are recorded roughly 170 metres and 195 metres to the west-northwest and northwest respectively, suggesting that this particular stretch of shoreline was used repeatedly and over time by people exploiting the island's coastal resources.

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Pete F
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