Midden

The National Monuments Service's description

At a small rocky cove overlooking Lough Foyle.
Worked flint was found lying on the beach in the intertidal zone, only accessible during low tides (McNaught 1998; SMR File; NMI Report 23 September 1999). Similar lithics were recovered from the intertidal zone at the adjacent cove c. 90m to W (DG022-010----; DG022-012----; DG022-013). The flints, which include flakes, blades and cores, have been typologically dated to the Earlier Mesolithic period (Costa et al. 2001, 1-8). This material may have eroded out of a midden/settlement site located above the beach. Alternatively, it is possible that it was washed out of a submerged palaeo-landscape which lies beneath the waters of Lough Foyle (Costa et al. 2001, 1; Westley 2015, 243-257). Remnants of a submerged peat layer were recorded on the seabed at this cove. Samples from the base and top of the peat layer date it to c.9.4–8.7 cal ka BP, contemporary with the Earlier Mesolithic period. The lithics, therefore, may derive from settlement sites in an esturine landscape that has since been inundated by rising sea levels (Westley 2015, 252-253).
Another concentration of flints (DG022-014----) was recovered in 2019 c. 200m to NW.

Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy

Date of revised upload: 27 October 2021

References

McNaught, B. 1998 Early Mesolithic site discovered in Donegal. Donegal Annual 50, 64–5.

Westley, K. 2015 Submerged Mesolithic landscape investigation, Eleven Ballyboes, Republic of Ireland. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 44. 2, 243–257

Costa, L., Sternke, F. and Woodman, P. 2001 The Analysis of a Lithic Assemblage from Eleven Ballyboes, County Donegal. Ulster Journal of Archaeology 60, 1-8