What lay beneath was a midden, an ancient rubbish deposit of the sort that, unglamorous as the description sounds, tells archaeologists more about daily life than almost any other kind of site. Once the mound was cleared, a roughly circular spread of stones and burnt sandstone appeared, about seven metres across, sitting in grey-brown soil and carrying within it a quiet inventory of what people here once ate and discarded.

Scattered across that stone spread were fragments of cattle and sheep bone, hazel nut shells, and sea shells, with a fish bone and a bird bone also noted among the finds. In the north-east quadrant of the spread, a denser concentration of shells had accumulated, running roughly three metres by two, and made up primarily of limpets, with periwinkles and mussels also present. Limpets in particular were a staple food along the Irish Atlantic coast for millennia, gathered from exposed rock at low tide and requiring no tools or preparation beyond a fire. The burnt sandstone within the deposit suggests cooking took place nearby, or that fire-heated stones were used in the process, a common technique before metal vessels became widely available. The site sits on a gentle rise, about thirty metres from an enclosure of its own archaeological interest, and the surrounding field boundaries appear to have defined this small area for a very long time.