Midden, Gooreen, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Settlement Sites
On the northern shoreline of Omey Island, a stretch of sand dune has been slowly giving way, and what it is revealing is older than anyone who walks past it.
A short section of a midden, just 2.8 metres long, has been exposed in the dune face where the sod and sand have recently collapsed and begun to overhang. A midden is essentially a refuse heap left by earlier inhabitants, typically composed of the shells of shellfish consumed over time, and this one is built almost entirely of limpet shells, with some razor shells also visible among the fallen sand. It is a small, unglamorous thing. It is also a direct trace of people eating beside the sea.
What makes this particular exposure quietly remarkable is that it does not stand alone. Another midden lies roughly 80 metres to the west-south-west, and a further one sits approximately 90 metres to the east. Together they suggest that this stretch of Omey's northern dunes was a place of repeated, sustained occupation, with communities returning to the same shoreline over generations and leaving behind the same evidence of meals taken and shellfish gathered. Omey Island itself, accessible on foot across a tidal strand at low water from Claddaghduff in Connemara, has a long history of settlement, and these coastal deposits are among its quieter physical traces.