Doneraile’s Cave Archive
The wider North Atlantic climate was unstable. Greenland ice-core records show repeated swings between colder stadials and comparatively milder interstadials, sometimes over periods much shorter than conventional archaeological eras. Around the notional date used here, conditions in and around Ireland were cold, but “Ice Age” should not suggest a single unchanging white wilderness. Temperature, snowfall, sea level, vegetation and the reach of glaciers varied substantially through time and from one region to another. The landscape that future ice would scour was already being shaped by frost, wind, meltwater and changing ice margins.