What is recorded here

Midden in Rinnaraw is a shell heap beside a cashel house in County Donegal, Ireland. Ninth-century life and later eleventh-century layers mixed under collapsed wall stones, preserving limpets, periwinkles, bone points and iron fragments. The pile may have grown across generations, receiving kitchen waste and workshop debris until the structure itself broke open above it.

Located adjacent to a house (DG016-016001-) in the NW quadrant of a cashel (DG016-016----). This midden was discovered in the course of an excavation of the cashel which was undertaken in the late 1980’s (Comber et al. 2006, 84). It was located in the area of the N–NE wall of the house. The stratigraphy here was complicated; midden material was mixed in with wall collapse, and the exact relationship of the midden to the house wall was not clarified. It was composed predominately of limpets and periwinkles shells, and in the lower levels there were animal bones and iron slag, as well as a pot sherd, two bone points, a small iron handle, an iron knife fragment, and a tuyere or furnace lining fragment (Ibid. 84). It may have been a multi-period midden. Radiocarbon dates suggest that the primary phase of occupation was in the 9th-century, but shells from upper levels of the midden produced an 11th-century date (Ibid., 105-6). Another midden (DG016-016003-) was found on the NW side of the house. Compiler: Jane O'Shaughnessy Date of upload: 12 December 2019

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