Evidence of Palaeolithic humans in ireland

tattoo86

http://https://itsligo.ie/2016/03/20/archaeologyhumanexistence20032016/

Always knew evidence would eventually be found. Really exciting!

UsedToWait

tattoo86 wrote: »

http://https://itsligo.ie/2016/03/20/archaeologyhumanexistence20032016/

Always knew evidence would eventually be found. Really exciting!

Link is faulty - correct link is:

https://itsligo.ie/2016/03/20/archaeologyhumanexistence20032016/

tattoo86

Thanks for that

Wibbs

Great news! *crosses fingers for evidence of Neandertals going even further back*

UsedToWait

tattoo86 wrote: »

Thanks for that

No worries..

So, as someone who knows nothing about Archaeology, who were the people who killed the bear, and where are they likely to have come to Ireland from?
What type of people are we talking about - what type of civilization / language / tools would they have had?

And why is there no evidence of human bones from the period, rather than animal bones that they would have butchered?

edit: (Or should I be looking in the Anthropology forum for such information?)

Conall Cernach

UsedToWait wrote: »

No worries..

And why is there no evidence of human bones from the period, rather than animal bones that they would have butchered?

Well, this is just one bone that has been identified so far so evidence of anything from that time period is few and far between and maybe we just haven't come across it yet. Humans from that period might have cremated their dead and so there might not be too many bones lying about the place. Some of the evidence may have been found but was catalogued incorrectly. This bear bone is an example of that as it was found in the early 20th century before carbon dating and so no one suspected that it could have been earlier than was generally accepted for humans to have been in Ireland. Perhaps if everything was carbon dated now we might discover that there are loads of items from that time.

Then maybe a lot of evidence has been destroyed and lies under more modern development. Or perhaps the bone doesn't come from an Irish bear and was only brought to Ireland much later than the bear was killed.

John_Rambo

Very exciting.

Quote here from Dr. Marion Dowd; “When a Palaeolithic date was returned, it came as quite a shock. Here we had evidence of someone butchering a brown bear carcass and cutting through the knee probably to extract the tendons. Yes, we expected a prehistoric date, but the Palaeolithic result took us completely by surprise,”


I'm guessing bear tendons were extremely tough, long lengths of string? Very handy for hunter/gatherers to have. Thousands of uses.



Source and article in the Indo - http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/bear-bone-discovery-pushes-back-date-of-human-existence-in-ireland-by-2500-years-34556770.html

flashforward

Just seen this on the news.

Do they believe Man was on the island due to the scratches on the bears knee?

The scratches are parallel - what instrument 10000 years ago could have produced this?

Seems potentially fishy to me..

John_Rambo

flashforward wrote: »

Just seen this on the news.

Do they believe Man was on the island due to the scratches on the bears knee?

The scratches are parallel - what instrument 10000 years ago could have produced this?

Seems potentially fishy to me..

Flint or sharpened stone were all the rage. Flaking stone was popular too producing very sharp instruments.

slowburner

flashforward wrote: »

Just seen this on the news.

Do they believe Man was on the island due to the scratches on the bears knee?

The scratches are parallel - what instrument 10000 years ago could have produced this?

Seems potentially fishy to me..

Chert, or flint were readily available materials that are capable of producing an edge superior to steel.
The parallel cuts are thought to be a consequence of repeated attempts to cut through sinew and it is also thought that this may be evidence of a less than proficient butcher. It is easy to form the impression that long marks mean long blades, but the same marks can be made with short, pointed blades or flakes.

markesmith

https://itsligo.ie/2016/03/20/archaeologyhumanexistence20032016/

Proof that humans had arrived in Ireland by 10500 BC, pushing back the date by 2,500 years. Was the country not in the middle of an Ice Age or cold snap at that time? What are your thought?

Edit: sorry tattoo86, didn't realise you had just posted a thread on this.

cfuserkildare

So this would be around the same time as the cave-paintings and bone work at Cresswell on Derby/Nottingham border?

slowburner

markesmith wrote: »

https://itsligo.ie/2016/03/20/archaeologyhumanexistence20032016/

Proof that humans had arrived in Ireland by 10500 BC, pushing back the date by 2,500 years. Was the country not in the middle of an Ice Age or cold snap at that time? What are your thought?

Edit: sorry tattoo86, didn't realise you had just posted a thread on this.

This is the big question and the answer is not simple.

We can ask the question in a couple of ways. Are we looking at evidence that tells us the Holocene* began much earlier than we thought? Are we looking at an end to the Pleistocene that is earlier than we thought?
More importantly, what does the potential presence of a human population on the post-glacial island of Ireland tell us?

This is one of the thorniest questions in Irish archaeology. Was the climate in Ireland suitable for a sustained human presence at this time? Or were the people who made these cut marks simply visiting, long-range hunters from elsewhere?
Data which tells us about the sort of climate present in the early Holocene is still hotly debated. Knowing what the climate was like is obviously crucial: if we know what the climate was like, we can make inferences about the likelihood of ecosystems that might support human life.
Most of the dates for this period comes from analysis of lake sediments - the earliest reliable dates were obtained in the Dublin mountains in 1938 (Jessen & Farrington) and new corroborative data was added from a variety of locations in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s.
The late-glacial transitional period into the Holocene (the period relevant to the bear patella) is known to be one of the most complex of all climatic phases in Ireland.
The 10.5K BP date puts the bear patella (not necessarily the cut marks) into the 11K BP Nahanagan Stadial (aka the Younger Dryas period) when there was renewed glaciation - this was the glaciation that wiped out - or is believed to have wiped out the giant Irish deer (Megaloceros giganteus).
The 10.5K BP date is right on the cusp of the transition from the Nahanagan Stadial to the Holocene.
The arrival of the Nahanagan Stadial is inferred from evidence from a small moraine revealed when water levels were lowered to supply Turlough Hill (Coulhoun and Synge, 1980). It showed that there was a renewed ice advance just about the same time as the bear patella date.
Was the climate capable of sustaining human life in Ireland at this time? Wilson (1990) states that temperatures were on average 8.5ºC lower than today's average. This puts the mean annual temperature at -2 to -5º C.
We know that vegetation was similar to tundra and low alpine scrub between 11 and 10K BP, so the question is was this enough to support a human population, and if so, how did they get here (Coxon, 2006)? But that is another question entirely.

If we take a leap of faith and assume that people were living here at this time - we must bear in mind that there is only one piece of evidence right now to support the leap of faith.
Then there is the question of what does this mean for an Irish chronology? Assigning the bear patella with cut marks to the Palaeolithic seems to me to be a risky assertion.
I would go further and argue that this one find does not prove the existence of an Irish Palaeolithic - it pushes back the earliest date for the Mesolithic.




*The Holocene is an umbrella term that describes the climatic period following the last phase of Ice advance. In essence, it is the climatic period we know now and the one which ultimately made the island habitable and led to the development of society.
The Pleistocene describes the many phases of ice advance and retreat preceding the Holocene and to date, we have no reliable evidence for a human population on this island in that phase.



Colhon, E. & Synge, F. (1980) The cirque moraines at Lough Nahanagan, County Wicklow, Ireland. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 80B.

Coxon, P. (2006) Landscapes and environments of the last glacial-intergalacial transition: a time of amazingly rapid change in Ireland. Irish Naturalist's Journal, Vol 29. Special supplement: Mind the Gap: Postglacial colonization of Ireland, (2008)

Jessen, K. & Farrington, A. (1928) The bogs at Ballybetagh, near Dublin, with remarks on late-glacial conditions in Ireland. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 44B.

Wilson, P. (1990) Morphology, sedimentological characteristics and origin of a fossil rock glacier on Muckish mountain, northwest Ireland. Geografisaka Annaler, 72A.

UsedToWait

^ Fascinating post.. Thanks for that.

Mountainsandh

slowburner wrote: »

This is the big question and the answer is not simple.

We can ask the question in a couple of ways. Are we looking at evidence that tells us the Holocene* began much earlier than we thought? Are we looking at an end to the Pleistocene that is earlier than we thought?
More importantly, what does the potential presence of a human population on the post-glacial island of Ireland tell us?



[/I]

What about continental paleolithic populations ? Didn't they manage to live in glacial conditions too ?

Wibbs

Mountainsandh wrote: »

What about continental paleolithic populations ? Didn't they manage to live in glacial conditions too ?

They generally stayed well south of the glaciers and moved north or south with them. In Ireland they didn't have that choice as the whole place was fully ice covered a few times. They were able to hang in on the edges in south east England as it remained ice free. Plus Britain was connected to mainland Europe for a lot longer so it was easier to travel there and back(hence Britain has more varied flora and fauna too). They can trace non modern humans in Britain back to nearly a million years ago as they never suffered the ice scouring that obliterated so much of Irish prehistory. You can be sure that there were ancient humans here, likely going way way back, but the chances of finding evidence of them is going to be slim.

Mountainsandh

Wibbs wrote: »

They generally stayed well south of the glaciers and moved north or south with them. In Ireland they didn't have that choice as the whole place was fully ice covered a few times. They were able to hang in on the edges in south east England as it remained ice free. Plus Britain was connected to mainland Europe for a lot longer so it was easier to travel there and back(hence Britain has more varied flora and fauna too). They can trace non modern humans in Britain back to nearly a million years ago as they never suffered the ice scouring that obliterated so much of Irish prehistory. You can be sure that there were ancient humans here, likely going way way back, but the chances of finding evidence of them is going to be slim.

My understanding was that the South of Ireland remained relatively ice free for this more recent glacial period. I wonder would the lower sea levels mean that a much wider "skirt" of land in the South have enabled them to survive there, with sporadic/nomadic incursions into Clare and other Western areas when weather allowed. I'm useless at comprehending time scales, I have the Doggerland geography in mind.

cfuserkildare

Mountainsandh wrote: »

My understanding was that the South of Ireland remained relatively ice free for this more recent glacial period. I wonder would the lower sea levels mean that a much wider "skirt" of land in the South have enabled them to survive there, with sporadic/nomadic incursions into Clare and other Western areas when weather allowed. I'm useless at comprehending time scales, I have the Doggerland geography in mind.

Hi Mountainsandh,

According to many sources, sea levels were approximately 130m lower than current levels, so most of the Irish sea would have been dry as was the North Sea during the same period.

Hope this helps, "By 15,000 years ago only Ulster was still buried under the dying ice sheet. Although the rising sea levels had begun to flood the lower lands, a land bridge still connected the south-eastern tip of Ireland to south-western England.", Quoted from http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/pre_norman_history/iceage.html

slowburner

cfuserkildare wrote: »

Hi Mountainsandh,

According to many sources, sea levels were approximately 130m lower than current levels, so most of the Irish sea would have been dry as was the North Sea during the same period.

Hope this helps, "By 15,000 years ago only Ulster was still buried under the dying ice sheet. Although the rising sea levels had begun to flood the lower lands, a land bridge still connected the south-eastern tip of Ireland to south-western England.", Quoted from http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/pre_norman_history/iceage.html

When were sea levels 130m below their current levels?

While I am sure you mean well, the site you have quoted from is well known for its unreliability and frequently extravagant claims - as in this case.
There is no evidence to support the idea that there was a landbridge between Britain and Ireland in the Holocene. What is much more remarkable is that people colonised this island without a landbridge. Furthermore, the date given for ice retreating to just Ulster by 15K BP is completely inaccurate. Ireland was still in the grip of the Midlandian phase at that time. Ice retreat to that extent did not take place for at least another 2000 years.

cfuserkildare

slowburner wrote: »

When were sea levels 130m below their current levels?

While I am sure you mean well, the site you have quoted from is well known for its unreliability and frequently extravagant claims - as in this case.
There is no evidence to support the idea that there was a landbridge between Britain and Ireland in the Holocene. What is much more remarkable is that people colonised this island without a landbridge. Furthermore, the date given for ice retreating to just Ulster by 15K BP is completely inaccurate. Ireland was still in the grip of the Midlandian phase at that time. Ice retreat to that extent did not take place for at least another 2000 years.

Has no-one read Graham Hancock's books?
Where did the water go when the massive ice sheet melted?
Is the underwater archaeology findings from the North Sea, Irish Sea, or English channel false or inaccurate?

slowburner

cfuserkildare wrote: »

Has no-one read Graham Hancock'sbooks?

Not me, nor do I intend to waste my time. I had never heard of the man before this and I was lucky not to. Pseudo-science is infuriating.

Where did the water go when the massive ice sheet melted?

It went into the sea and caused sea level rise. You mentioned a sea level 130m lower than today. When ice melts, it creates water and causes sea levels to rise, not fall.

Is the underwater archaeology findings from the North Sea, Irish Sea, or English channel false or inaccurate?

No, they are not, but you are mixing up chronologies. Reading Graham Hancock will do that to you.
I will not engage in this conversation any further so please do not continue with it. It is tiresome and unhelpful.

slowburner

https://grahamhancock.com/

cfuserkildare

Perhaps this would be classed as proof of sea level rise since end of last Glacial Period:-

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/

Or this?

http://noc.ac.uk/news/global-sea-level-rise-end-last-ice-age

or even this?

http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/coasts/sea-level-rise/

Or many other sources!

Cianmcliam

Sea levels did rise since the end of the last ice age and continued to rise gradually during the Neolithic, you can see this for yourself at some of the submerged sites in coastal regions like Brittany for example. Nowhere near 130m though. However, the massive weight of the glaciers also created a reverse effect where the land rose after the melt creating raised beaches up to at least 25m in places in Northern Ireland.

PMBC

Great info here; very informative

Mountainsandh

I've seen 120 m lowest mentioned on (reasonably scientific) French literature. But the rising of sea level after that was rapid and irregular from all sources I'm looking at.

Why the febrile reaction to the harmless hypothesis that the land bridge may in fact have more or less remained for another bit ?

Timelines for sea levels and geography of the area seem imprecise enough to reasonably allow varied configurations (land brigde, partial ford like land bridge, no land bridge...).

Is there evidence that the land bridge was not there ?
If evidence of paleolithic man is mostly underwater due to glaciation at the time ?

slowburner

One other interesting aspect of the Late-glacial involves the immigration of plants and animals back into Ireland during a rapid rise in sea-level. As Ireland recovered isostatically from the weight of Midlandian ice relative sea-level fell, but rapid eustatic rise in sea-level is supposed to have isolated Ireland, which may have been linked to Britain by a 'tenuous landbridge' for a very short period only (between 18 and 14 1C ka BP according to Lambeck 1996; or possibly as late as 12.5 14Ck a BP, Brooks et al. 2008) which was a time of very cold climate. It is unlikely that many plants and animals survived the maximum of the Midlandian in Ireland or that any other landbridge was possible after 12.5 14C ka BP. Such a connection to Britain was thus only present in cold-climate conditions and plants and animals must have migrated into Ireland after it was cut-off by the sea in the Midlandian Late-glacial (Woodgrange Interstadial) and in the early Holocene. However, it appears that in the Holocene even terrestrial molluscs managed to cross this barrier with relative ease (Preece et al. 1986).

(Coxon 2006)

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is current thought on the extent of ice cover during the last glacial maximum (LGM) in Ireland.
The image below (Clarke et al, 2012) shows the extent of ice cover in the now outdated model (dashed line) and the new model which is based on more advanced palaoenvironmental information and geochronometric data. The crucial fact in this paper is the identification of a sub marine moraine deposit discovered relatively recently which indicates the true extent of ice cover in the LGM. This information was not available to previous theorists.

Clarke et al, (2012) Pattern and timing of retreat of the last British-Irish ice sheet. Quaternary Science Reviews 44. 112 - 146.

Fighting leprechaun 20

Now the question is how far back does the irish paleo go.

Mountainsandh

... and how many previous finds should be revisited !

robp

I'd imagine a lot was already done with the Irish quaternary fauna project.

Mountainsandh

robp wrote: »

I'd imagine a lot was already done with the Irish quaternary fauna project.

Is this the project that revisited the above finds in particular ?

slowburner

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Is this the project that revisited the above finds in particular ?

The initial find was made by Ruth Carden of the National Museum of Ireland, and as far as I can gather, the intent is to revisit similar collections - subject to funding etc.

robp

Fighting leprechaun 20 wrote: »

The bone is from an irish cave and was actually found a century ago along with hundreds of other bones , I can't believe people are trying to dispute indisputable evidence

Except that it is not indisputable. We know Mesolithic people dug up and modified animals remains. The case rests on how distinct are cut marks on fresh vs old bone

Fighting leprechaun 20

Conall Cernach wrote: »

Well, this is just one bone that has been identified so far so evidence of anything from that time period is few and far between and maybe we just haven't come across it yet. Humans from that period might have cremated their dead and so there might not be too many bones lying about the place. Some of the evidence may have been found but was catalogued incorrectly. This bear bone is an example of that as it was found in the early 20th century before carbon dating and so no one suspected that it could have been earlier than was generally accepted for humans to have been in Ireland. Perhaps if everything was carbon dated now we might discover that there are loads of items from that time.

Then maybe a lot of evidence has been destroyed and lies under more modern development. Or perhaps the bone doesn't come from an Irish bear and was only brought to Ireland much later than the bear was killed.

Funny enough I remember seeing an article of cremated remains found here , they were from the mesolithic however but I see no reason why the same practice wouldn't be carried out

Fighting leprechaun 20

cfuserkildare wrote: »

Hi Mountainsandh,

According to many sources, sea levels were approximately 130m lower than current levels, so most of the Irish sea would have been dry as was the North Sea during the same period.

Hope this helps, "By 15,000 years ago only Ulster was still buried under the dying ice sheet. Although the rising sea levels had begun to flood the lower lands, a land bridge still connected the south-eastern tip of Ireland to south-western England.", Quoted from


Exactly . I believe black water valley was ice free for much longer even during the cold snap , that's why we find animals such as hyena bear wolf horses mammoth and so on going back 20,000 -40,000 years.

Fighting leprechaun 20

cfuserkildare wrote: »

So this would be around the same time as the cave-paintings and bone work at Cresswell on Derby/Nottingham border?

Yes I believe both are from 13,000 BP.

Fighting leprechaun 20

robp wrote: »

Fighting leprechaun 20 wrote: »

The bone is from an irish cave and was actually found a century ago along with hundreds of other bones , I can't believe people are trying to dispute indisputable evidence

Except that it is not indisputable. We know Mesolithic people dug up and modified animals remains. The case rests on how distinct are cut marks on fresh vs old bone

Add your reply here.

Yes it is indisputable -the Cutts were exaimed by 3 specialists under high powered microscopes and all 3 came to the same conclusion that the cuts were made on fresh bone 13,000 years ago, the findings were than published and reviewed.

As I said indispensable.

Fighting leprechaun 20

Fighting leprechaun 20 wrote: »

robp wrote: »

Fighting leprechaun 20 wrote: »

The bone is from an irish cave and was actually found a century ago along with hundreds of other bones , I can't believe people are trying to dispute indisputable evidence

Except that it is not indisputable. We know Mesolithic people dug up and modified animals remains. The case rests on how distinct are cut marks on fresh vs old bone

Add your reply here.

Yes it is indisputable -the Cutts were exaimed by 3 specialists under high powered microscopes and all 3 came to the same conclusion that the cuts were made on fresh bone 13,000 years ago, the findings were than published and reviewed.

As I said undispensable.

Add your reply here.

Sourse -Quaternary Science Reviews (QSR).

Paddico

Fascinating stuff.

Has the actually cave been mentioned?

Fighting leprechaun 20

UsedToWait wrote: »

No worries..

So, as someone who knows nothing about Archaeology, who were the people who killed the bear, and where are they likely to have come to Ireland from?
What type of people are we talking about - what type of civilization / language / tools would they have had?

And why is there no evidence of human bones from the period, rather than animal bones that they would have butchered?

edit: (Or should I be looking in the Anthropology forum for such information?)

Human bones from the palaeolithic are incredibly rare and almost impossible to find . We generally go off evidence of tools or some other indication such as this one .

cfuserkildare

It just seems surprising that there are so few finds here,

Considering how close sites like the Cresswell Crags in DerbyShire/Nottinghamshire are.

Fighting leprechaun 20

cfuserkildare wrote: »

It just seems surprising that there are so few finds here,

Considering how close sites like the Cresswell Crags in DerbyShire/Nottinghamshire are.

Well the ice did a number on the landscape and the research into palaeolithic Ireland is almost none existent they don't even teach it in studies. So even if it was staring them in the face they probably wouldn't be able to identify it. Thank the incompetent education system for that one. I have no doubt there were palaeolithic people here for hundreds of thousands of years. . Finding undeniable evidence is another matter.

Wibbs

I reckon the first order of business would be to try to identify possible sites that could have preserved the kind of deposits where evidence might be found. Given the repeated glaciation cave systems in the south west of the country might be the best bet?

tac foley

Worth a look at.....................http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlkik/ihm/ancient.htm

tac

Mountainsandh

Wibbs wrote: »

I reckon the first order of business would be to try to identify possible sites that could have preserved the kind of deposits where evidence might be found. Given the repeated glaciation cave systems in the south west of the country might be the best bet?

And the Cappagh valley cave system in the South East. I think some professors are revisiting that idea too.

slowburner

tac foley wrote: »

Worth a look at.....................http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlkik/ihm/ancient.htm

tac

Worth a look with a critical, and informed eye. Definitely not to be taken as established fact.

tac foley

...for the map, showing the far SE corner of the island still connected to the British peninsular at that time.............

tac

Aelfric

What I fail to understand, is that for many many years, academics have been trying to find the Irish Palaeolithic, trying to think about where it might have survived. In Britain, Palaeolithic evidence turns up during gravel extraction etc., where the Aggregates Levy funds monitoring and excavation of gravel/sand quarries etc., and yet there's nothing similar happening here in Ireland. How do people expect to find evidence of the Irish Palaeolithic if they're looking in the wrong places? Anything currently resembling ground level is vastly different from the levels 15k years ago. Caves, I suppose are a logical choice, but there are bound to be buried palaeochannels and stuff out there that contain good evidence. We just stop at the top of (current) subsoil.

tac foley

TBH, compared with the rest of the British Isles, Ireland is very poorly-off for caves, notwithstanding that a few of them are pretty extensive and impressive systems in their own right -

Caves that lie partly or wholly within Northern Ireland are marked with an asterisk (*).
Mythological caves are marked with a dagger (†).
Ailwee Cave, County Clare
Badger Pot, County Fermanagh*
Boho Caves, County Fermanagh*
Cloyne Cave, County Cork
Crag Cave, County Kerry
Dunmore Cave, County Kilkenny
Fintan's Grave, County Tipperary†
Kelly's Cave, County Mayo
Killavullen Caves, County Cork
Marble Arch Caves, County Fermanagh*
Mitchelstown Cave, County Tipperary
Noon's Hole, County Fermanagh*
Pol an Ionain, County Clare
Pollatoomary, County Mayo
Pollnagollum–Poulelva, County Clare
Portbraddon Cave, County Antrim*
Shannon Cave, County Cavan and County Fermanagh*

Nor am I certain exactly what is meant by 'mythological' cave formations. Excavating caves that only exist in myth and legend is very difficult.

There seems to be no Irish 'version' of the Cheddar Gorge, either. Given the extreme paucity of current Irish archeological work efforts, I think it's fair to say that we'll never know in our lifetimes just about anything more than we already do - and THAT is almost non-existent.

It's all very sad.

tac

Mountainsandh

Sorry to harp on about the same point over and over, but the cave system near Dungarvan is noteworthy, and not quite fully explored.

About one of the caves :

From a palaeontological perspective Ballynamintra is critically important. It is
one of just two Irish sites (with Castlepook) where faunal remains of Midlandian
and Late Glacial date have been discovered and it is one of just four caves
(Shandon, Castlepook and Foley caves being the other three) that has fauna
belonging to a period earlier than the Last Glacial Maximum. The recovery of the
fauna from archetypal cave sediments - grey earths and tufa, sandy earths and possible
debris flows (with shattered stalagmitic floors) and breccias - is also
significant

... it is evident from the published excavation
report that the cave's sedimentological sequence is of much greater complexity
than that described; the lithostratigraphy and likely lithogenesis of the
sequence is not known, nor are the ages of many of the excavated units...
(mention of techniques used at another cave)
The critical reason why such studies are carried out is to
allow for the prediction of the likely locations, broad types and survival states of a
variety of Late Pleistocene deposits, and by extension the potential for the discovery
of Palaeolithic archaeology. For these reasons it is proposed to undertake a new
phase of fieldwork at Bal1ynamintra

This is from a very interesting pdf hosted by Waterford co Council http://snap.waterfordcoco.ie/collections/ejournals/100779/100779.pdf
Decies Journal of the Waterford Archeological & Historical Society, #65, 2009.

I don't know if the above mentioned further research has been undertaken yet, certainly the economical climate did not help, but it is mentioned that erosion was a threat to the site.

edit : Google search "cave system Dungarvan" has a good selection of links on the topic. Kilgreany being the most "popular".

tac foley

'...Shandon, Castlepook and Foley caves being the other three...'

Ah, fame at last.

tac