What is recorded here

Midden in Eleven Ballyboes is a drowned or eroded human place at the west end of a small rocky cove on Lough Foyle, where worked flint still lies exposed in the sands and gravel only at low tide. The flints include flakes, blades and cores dated to the Earlier Mesolithic period, suggesting that people once lived, cut, struck or discarded near this water’s edge before the shoreline changed. The cove may have been a kitchen, a workshop, a camp or a lost bank above which the sea now moves; either way, it is a place where human hands and water have shared one surface for a very long time.

At the W end of a small rocky cove on the NW shoreline of Lough Foyle. A large amount of worked flint was found lying in the sands and gravel of the intertidal zone, only accessible during low tides (McNaught 1998; SMR File; NMI Report 23 September 1999). This material may have been washed out of a midden/settlement site located above the beach. Alternatively, it is possible that it was washed out of a palaeo-landscape which has since been inundated by the sea and now lies beneath the waters of Lough Foyle (Costa et al. 2001, 1; Westley 2015, 243-257). Similar lithics were recovered nearby (DG022-010----; DG022-013) and at the adjacent cove c. 90m to E (DG022-011----). The flints, which include flakes, blades and cores, have been typologically dated to the Earlier Mesolithic period (Costa et al. 2001, 1-8). Another concentration of flints (DG022-014----) was recovered in 2019 c. 100m to NW. Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy Date of revised upload: 27 October 2021

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