County: Sligo Site name: Tanrego East/Carrowmore
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SL019-057005 Licence number: 22E0642
Author: Alan Healy and Rory Connolly
Site type: Midden
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 560265m, N 831574m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.231495, -8.609439
SL019-057005 (Site C) 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 objective 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.
SL019-057005 consists of a dense layer of predominantly oyster shells visible in a section face across an area of approximately 150m (D 1.1–1.3m). Concentrations of limpet shells and occasional periwinkles are also visible. The site is situated on the western side of Ballysadare Bay in the townland of Tanrego East/Carrowmore, Co. Sligo. This site lies approximately 1.1 km south-east of SL019-057001 in Tanrego West and is one of seven recorded middens which can be intermittently traced along the shore. Although the midden material is highly fragmented in places and subject to significant bioturbation due to overgrowing vegetation, areas which appear to preserve more intact stratigraphy are identifiable.
In total, three samples of oyster shell were collected from midden (SL019-057005).
Strokestown, Co Roscommon
