Digging up a different past

A chance discovery has opened up the possibility that settlement took place in Ireland much earlier than previously believed, …

A chance discovery has opened up the possibility that settlement took place in Ireland much earlier than previously believed, writes Claire O'Connell

THE KNAPPED FLINT is hardly a work of art, but its age has prompted some head-scratching. The weight of artefact evidence suggests that Ireland was first settled around 10,000 years ago. So why is an early Stone Age tool lying in a drumlin here? Is this a rare legacy of earlier, Neanderthal activity in Ireland? Or did the flint wind up here by chance, bussed in by a glacier from another area?

The flint flake came to light at the site of a housing development in the townland of Ballycullen on a slope overlooking Newtownards and Strangford Lough. Excavator Jon Stirland from Archaeological Consultancy Services Ltd detailed the unearthing in Archaeology Ireland earlier this year, describing how it was discovered as a "chance find" within a spoil heap associated with test trenching of a drumlin.

Initially, the discovered piece of flint was thought to be a crude handaxe, which generated much excitement, explains Cork-based lithics consultant Dr Farina Sternke. But when she saw pictures, she knew this was no handaxe. However, it was still intriguingly old. "I said it still looks like something that could well be middle Palaeolithic [early Stone Age]. I had an inkling but from the pictures you couldn't tell, so they sent the flake to me by courier," she says.

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On closer inspection, she confirmed this was a "Levallois" flake, fashioned using a stone to chip the flint in a distinctive way. "It looks like a tortoise turned upside down. It stands out, it's an unusual form of technology that's associated with the middle Palaeolithic, it doesn't occur anywhere else. And that particular type of Levallois is very close to around the 200,000 year mark," explains Dr Sternke, who describes how the Newtownards flint can easily fit into the palm of your hand.

"It's a two-dimensional way of flaking that's very close to handaxes yet very removed because you can do so much more with the technology. But [the Newtownards flint] is not a very pretty artefact. The person that made it wasn't very proficient in what he or she was doing." Her report estimated that this particular flake was fashioned between 240,000 and 180,000 years ago in the early-middle Palaeolithic. And it's the real deal, according to Dr Sternke, who insists this is not a planted hoax.

"It looks like the stuff that comes out everywhere else in Europe. It's rolled and it has got this orangey-white patina which is very thick. It would be very hard to recreate that. Also in gravel you would have to dig very deep down [to plant]. I don't think it's worth the trouble," she says.

So if the flake is genuine and from the Palaeolithic era, how come it is in Ireland? The seven-centimetre long flint showed signs of having been moved by ice or water, and geological surveys of the Newtownards site suggest that it hitchhiked in on an ice sheet around 16,000 years ago from its original location.

"It would have been in ice at least once and maybe twice," notes Sternke. "It could have come from Scotland or somewhere in the Irish Sea, which is absolutely plausible because at many points Ireland would have been connected with mainland Europe. There's a lot of stuff coming up between the North Sea basin between England and Holland, so there's no reason to believe there isn't stuff in the Irish Sea."

Ice has a lot to answer for, according to Peter Woodman, professor emeritus of archaeology at University College Cork. He believes we need to keep our minds open about the possibility of an Irish Stone Age, and that the ice sheets which hit Ireland hard may potentially have removed the obvious evidence of Palaeolithic activity.

"About 10 years ago, I wrote a paper on pushing the boat out for an Irish Upper Palaeololithic, and for a while I thought this was a flight of fancy. But I would argue strongly for the chance of an Upper Palaeolithic but we should also consider the possibility of something earlier. So I found it fascinating to see something like this turning up."

Animals appear to have lived here in the late Stone Age, so Ireland must have been somehow accessible, argues Woodman. "The interesting thing is around this period of 30,000 to 40,000 years ago we have a hugely rich mammalian fauna in Ireland and there was no land bridge. We had hyenas and mammoths through to things like horse and red deer. Practically everything that was in Europe was in Ireland and there doesn't seem to have been a land bridge," he says. "Animals certainly get across, so why not humans? I think we place too much emphasis on water and the idea of having to have a dry land connection."

However, the handful of possibly Stone Age artefacts discovered here to date have not yielded much solid data. Previous findings of isolated Palaeolithic tools in Ireland and towards the west of Britain have often been dismissed or explained by the migration of ice sheets. "We have had so many false dawns and sterile, acrimonious debates around the possibility of an Irish Palaeolithic," says Prof Woodman. "It's something I would desperately love to see, but because of that you have to be doubly critical and when something like this turns up you are always that bit careful."

Palaeolithic artefacts are plentiful in south-east Britain, which was habitable thanks to climatic conditions. But the biggest issue for Ireland is that, if similar evidence ever existed, ice sheets could have bulldozed it away.

"In Ireland, we probably have been more extensively glaciated than most other regions because of the fact that we are sticking out into the Atlantic and a frozen Atlantic would have more effect on us. Therefore the chances of us finding anything is always slight," notes Prof Woodman. "This is the big problem, so you really are looking at residual bits and pieces that have got left behind."

Ice was also used to explain the discovery of a flint flake in 1968 at Mell in Drogheda. Its discoverer, Frank Mitchell, noted at the time that while the artefact was from the Stone Age, it wasn't evidence of settlement in Ireland at that period.

However, Prof Woodman believes we need to be open to the possibilities that hominids were in Ireland long before the current artefact record suggests. "One would hesitate to say that this [flake] is absolutely definitive evidence that there were people living in Ireland at the time when that Levallois technology was being used," he says.

"But I think it's a very interesting indicator that if people look and ask questions, you never know what might turn up. I would still hold the door open just a little bit. You never know what might occur."