A thin band of limpet and periwinkle shells, no more than two to five centimetres deep, is visible where a coastal mound has been cut open by erosion. Loose shells have spilled downslope from the exposed layer, a quiet sign that the mound is still moving, still shedding what it once held.

What is visible here is a midden, the term archaeologists use for a deposit of domestic waste, typically food remains, left by past inhabitants of a place. This particular layer sits within the sandy body of a mound on the south-western slope of what may have been a habitation site, the kind of low, shell-rich rise that accumulates gradually around a dwelling as generations of people discard the remains of meals. Limpets and periwinkles were gathered from the shoreline and eaten, their shells discarded in the same spot over time until the deposit built up. Around thirty metres to the north, another habitation site and a second midden have been recorded, suggesting that the south-eastern corner of Inishkea South was once a place where people lived and ate and left traces of themselves in the ground.