Why wouldn’t you want to spend Christmas in Connemara? This beautiful photograph was taken this week by Clifden archaeologist Michael Gibbons, of Michael Gibbons Archaeology Travel. The weather in Connemara has been “interesting” over the past few weeks with storms once again battering coastal settlements revealing and destroying in equal measure. These middens on Mannin Bay, Connemara, a famous swimming beach known as the Coral Strand on the road to Ballyconneely, , took a hammering over the past few days. Michael, who conducts archaeological tours, says: “The lack of a dedicated survey and excavation unit or budget on the west coast results the loss of some really important sites. Middens along the coast here at Mannin and Truska date from the early bronze age through to early Christian times.”
- A midden is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, sherds, lithics, and other artefacts and ecofacts associated with past human occupation. Willie Hunter, of The Glasgow Herald once wrote about a common local saying when describing that a house was untidy – “the place is like Annicker’s Midden”. This was a butcher’s shop in Partick which had an indescribable midden out the back.