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Radiocarbon measurements are reported in radiocarbon years before present and must be calibrated against changing levels of atmospheric carbon-14 to produce calendar ranges. At more than thirty millennia ago those ranges can be broad. The modern IntCal20 calibration curve is designed for Northern Hemisphere terrestrial samples back to 55,000 calendar years before present, but it does not transform an Ice Age specimen into evidence for a named year. A date written as 31,689 BCE should consequently be read as a point within a much wider span, not as an anniversary in prehistoric Ireland.
Ireland lay on the north-western edge of Europe during a long cold age. The British–Irish Ice Sheet was not a fixed white blanket that appeared everywhere at once: it grew, shifted and responded to regional conditions. Major syntheses place its broad build-up after roughly 35,000–32,000 years ago, with maximum extent reached at different times in different sectors, broadly between c. 27,000 and 21,000 years ago. Around the notional date represented by 31,875 BCE, Ireland was thus moving towards, rather than sitting at the peak of, the Last Glacial Maximum.
