Awbeg Valley Reindeer
This was long before the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest and most extensive phase of the last glaciation in Ireland. Recent reconstructions of the British–Irish Ice Sheet indicate major growth from about 31,000 calibrated years before present, with different sectors advancing at different times; the ice sheet’s greatest volume came much later, around 23,000 years ago. Around the notional date represented by 31,877 BCE, Ireland should not be pictured simply as a single white mass of permanent ice. Conditions, ice margins and habitable ground varied sharply by region and through time.