Fermanagh’s Interstadial Mosses
For this period, Ireland’s archive is exceptionally uneven. Later prehistory is rich in houses, monuments and artefacts; the evidence for the earlier Upper Palaeolithic is sparse, frequently disturbed and difficult to date. Caves preserve bones but can also be used by carnivores, reworked by water, disturbed by digging or mixed by later processes. Sediments beneath glacial deposits preserve environmental snapshots, but only at rare sites exposed by quarrying, road works or research excavation. The resulting history is necessarily regional and provisional.