What is recorded here

Midden in Castlequarter (inch Ed) is a surviving shell midden west of Inch Castle, where oyster layers up to 0.2m thick still mark the edge between field and cliff. Agriculture and erosion have taken most of it, leaving two small patches that once belonged to a much larger heap of lives, meals and discarded shells. The loss is not empty; it is the shape of what remained visible enough to be tested, remembered and written.

Excavation licence number 01E0838. Two sites lay c. 100m west of Inch Castle. They had been noted as surviving portions of middens that lay between the field boundary and the cliff face. At Site 1 (DG046-036001-) four test-pits were placed in a surviving area of midden which was 25m in length and up to 5m in width. These established that in places a layer of shells up to 0.2m thick survived and that traces of burning occurred below the midden. A test-pit in the field revealed no trace of the midden. This may be the remains of a much larger midden which has been denuded by agriculture on one side and erosion on the other. Approximately 50m to the west a similar small patch of oysters was noted to have survived (Site 2). The shell layer was of approximately the same thickness as at Site 1. (Excavations Bulletin 2001; Milner & Woodman 2007, 104-5, No. 5) Peter Woodman, Department of Archaeology, University College Cork, and Nicky Milner, University of Newcastle. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 17 August 2012

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