County: Sligo Site name: Rosses Upper
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SL008-214 Licence number: 22E0634
Author: Alan Healy and Rory Connolly
Site type: Midden
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 564079m, N 839676m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.304574, -8.551916
SL008-214 (Site A) was sampled as part of a wider research project, Neolithic Marine Resource Exploitation in Atlantic Europe (NeoMarE), which is funded by an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship (GOIPD/2021/228) under the direction of Dr Rory Connolly and Dr Jessica Smyth, based at the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, and Site Director Alan Healy of Archaeological Management Solutions (AMS). The project seeks to investigate a series of six coastal shell middens in County Sligo with the twin objectives of assessing both timing and duration of midden deposition. The work aims to progress our understanding of past human occupation in Sligo’s coastal zone and establish how these sites relate to the wider archaeological landscape.
All of the sites included in the project are exposed in section and remain extremely vulnerable to substantial loss in the event of significant storm activity. Active erosion of archaeological material from the section faces is evident at each of the sites. The works carried out will mitigate against the loss of archaeological information to coastal erosion and accelerating climate change impacts.
SL008-214 consists of midden material exposed within an eroding cliffside section, a natural feature that borders the western and southern aspects of a curvilinear expanse of elevated terrain in Rosses Upper, Co. Sligo. Despite being concealed in places by vegetation, a dense layer of predominantly oyster (Ostrea sp.) shells can be traced intermittently for c. 40 m along the shore. Occasional inclusions of periwinkle (Littorina sp.) and cockle (Cerastoderma sp.) shells were also noted. Six samples of oyster shell were retrieved for radiocarbon dating.
Strokestown, Co Roscommon
