Research Paper on:
County Mayo Ireland's Achill Island and the Slievemore Ancient Ruins

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
if not elusive, pieces of the Emerald Isles rich historical and cultural puzzle. It exists today only in ruins, featured along what is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful  coastal landscapes in the world. Slievemore may be no more, but its significance cannot be underestimated. In many ways, its origins, pinnacle and decline represent Ireland itself -  communal, pastoral, and ultimately destroyed by religious turmoil and natural disaster. Achill is the largest island in Ireland, located in County Mayo, and is situated at one of Europes most  western points (King and McGrath, 1993). It is regarded by historians as "an excellent example of... mismatch between population and employment possibilities... a long tradition of emigration (King and  McGrath, 1993, p. 22). The mountainous terrain is frequently ravaged by the gusty winds and torrential downpours unleashed by the Atlantic Ocean, which have made cultivating the land a  most formidable challenge, to put it mildly (King and McGrath, 1993). The mountains are subdivided by rocky valleys and bogs or marshy swamplands, and the soil, which was an  infertile combination of soggy podzols and dry peat, was extremely difficult to farm (King and McGrath, 1993). The highest mountain on  Achill is Slievemore, with an elevation of over 2,200 feet (Excavations at the Deserted Village Slievemore 1991-2001). All that exists today are the ruins of 74 houses that once  comprised an agrarian settlement community. The Slievemore village consisted of three portions, Tuar, which was the west enclave; Tuar Reabhach, the area that extended west of the graveyard; and  Faiche, the eastern village (Excavations at the Deserted Village Slievemore 1991-2001, 2002). According to archeological investigations of the region, the earliest Slievemore settlement dates back to approximately 3000 B.C.,