Juniper Beneath the Drumlins
Radiocarbon chronology provides the essential caution. “Before present” conventionally means before 1950, while calibrated ages are estimates of calendar age derived from changing atmospheric carbon levels. A modern BCE year can be converted only approximately at this antiquity. The closest Irish environmental sequence is at Derryvree in County Fermanagh, where organic-rich freshwater silts lay beneath later glacial deposits. A published radiocarbon determination of about 30,500 radiocarbon years BP calibrates broadly to approximately 36,900–31,700 calendar years BP. That range encompasses the notional year considered here, but it does not prove that every feature of the Derryvree deposit formed in one particular season, generation or calendar year.