Mesolithic Tools Found in Northern Ireland

DERRYGONNELLY, NORTHERN IRELAND—BBC News reports that Eileen Murphy of Queens University Belfast, her colleagues, and more than 200 volunteers working through the Community Archaeology Program Northern Ireland uncovered 8,000-year-old artifacts while looking for remains of a 400-year-old castle in County Fermanagh. They found microliths and a core, or piece of stone used to make the tiny tools. “It’s a lovely, flat plateau right beside the River Sillies, and it would have been a really rich source of fish and waterbirds and an ideal place for hunter-gatherers to live,” Murphy said. Team members also uncovered evidence of a Bronze Age house that they were able to date with 4,000-year-old pottery recovered from the bottom of a posthole. To read about a source of food in Mesolithic Ireland, go to "Catching a Ride from Ireland."