County: Sligo Site name: Streedagh
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SL005-018 Licence number: 22E0645
Author: Alan Healy and Rory Connolly
Site type: Midden
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 563045m, N 850317m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.400109, -8.569122
SL005-018 (Site F) 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.
Shell midden SL005-018 (Site F) is situated in the townland of Streedagh, Co. Sligo on a steep, south-western facing slope of a coastal sand dune. Midden material comprising limpet (Patella sp.), periwinkle (Littorina sp.), and whelk (Buccinum sp.) shells are eroding from dark brown/black sedimentary matrixes exposed at a height of approximately 8-10m above the ground surface below and can be traced for c. 10m across the face of the dune (D 0.3 – 0.5m) within three separate paleosols sealed by saltation that can be traced for approximately 400m along the exposed dune. In addition to the shells, fragmented animal bones, fire-cracked stone, and a possible in-situ hearth are all visible in the section face.
The archaeological works at the site involved recording the exposed sections and collecting samples for radiocarbon dating. In total, five samples comprising shell and animal bone were collected from midden (SL005-018).
Strokestown, Co Roscommon
