Just beneath the turf, exposed by years of coastal erosion, lies a compressed layer of oyster shell mixed with burnt stones and charcoal, the remains of meals eaten and fires lit by people who lived here roughly two and a half thousand years ago. A midden, in archaeological terms, is essentially a prehistoric rubbish deposit, a place where communities discarded food waste and ash over time, and the accumulation of material at this site points to repeated, deliberate use of the shoreline across an extended period.

The deposit was first recorded in 1951 through the topographical files of what was then University College Galway, at which point the shell layer could be traced along approximately sixty metres of cliff face. By the time researchers Keary and Dunne revisited the site in 1973, that visible stretch had reduced to around twelve metres, suggesting that erosion had already consumed a significant portion of the deposit. A radiocarbon sample taken from the remaining section produced an uncalibrated date of 2650 plus or minus 110 years before present, placing the material broadly in the later Bronze Age or early Iron Age. The uncalibrated figure means the date has not been adjusted through dendrochronology to align with actual calendar years, so the true age sits within a range rather than a fixed point, but the broad picture is clear enough: people were gathering oysters and lighting fires on this peninsula well over two millennia ago.

The rate of loss between 1951 and 1973 raises an obvious question about what, if anything, remains today. Coastal erosion along this part of the Galway shoreline has continued steadily, and a deposit already reduced by more than two thirds within twenty years would have been under pressure for several decades since. What survives, if anything, is likely fragmentary, embedded in the cliff section rather than visible from above.