County: Donegal Site name: CASTLE QUARTER
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 01E0838
Author: Peter Woodman, Department of Archaeology, University College Cork, and Nicky Milner, University of Newcastle
Site type: Midden
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 632225m, N 922983m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 55.053299, -7.495677
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 (C319225) 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, C319226). The shell layer was of approximately the same thickness as at Site 1.
