The Doneraile Bone Puzzle
Radiocarbon dating does not yield a single, self-evident ancient calendar year. A laboratory measurement must be calibrated against independently constructed curves, and dates this old commonly produce ranges rather than a neat historical timestamp. In addition, the surviving Irish evidence was rarely laid down in one undisturbed sequence. A bone may date an animal’s death, not its arrival at a cave; a cave floor can combine material accumulated over many centuries or millennia; and early excavators often had neither the methods nor the records now expected.