6,000 year old pre-farming settlement found in the Burren in County Clare by Kerry O'Shea, IrishCentral -- Radiocarbon dating of an artifact found in the Burren in County Clare has redefined the time line of human inhabitance in Ireland. A shellfish cooker found in 2009 has been identified to be around 6,000 years old, predating the nearby Poulnabrone dolmen by hundreds of years.
The Irish Examiner reports that a midden, "a cooking area where nomad hunter-gatherers boiled or roasted shellfish," was discovered at Fanore Beach in Clare in 2009 by local woman Elaine O'Malley. Along with the midden were axes and smaller stone tools, artifacts of the Stone Age.
Also found at the site was "mysterious black layer of organic material" which researchers believe could have been from a tsunami that struck the Western coast of Ireland during the Stone Age, possibly wiping out the population of the area...
The mysterious black layer found at the site remains under investigation. "We have not been able to identify exactly what this black layer is yet but, as it happens, it is this layer which helped to protect the ancient settlement that we are currently excavating," said Lynch.
"If we can establish a date for this black material, it will help us to piece together more of the mystery of this site and it could tell us a bit about what happened here that brought the use of the midden to an end..."Archaeologists working in The Burren region. Photo by NUIG.
