The Dungarvan Valley Caves Project: First interim report. Decies: Journal of the Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society,

At present there is no convincing evidence for human activity in Ireland during the Palaeolithic, i.e. prior to the retreat of glacial ice in the northern hemisphere 10,000 BP (before the present). Whilst this may be explained by Ireland's position at the periphery of Palaeolithic Europe and the affects of intense glaciations that have regularly scoured the landscape during the course of the Pleistocene, the fact remains that Ireland shared largely the same climatic conditions that made human settlement possible in England and Wales, and Irish caves and bogs have also produced many of the same animal species exploited by these populations (Table 1; Woodman 1986; 1998; Woodman et al. 1997). Indeed ice sheets covered much of Wales with a similar frequency to Ireland yet the country contains Palaeolithic archaeology of considerable significance spanning a time-depth of a quarter of a million years. Perhaps an explanation for the absence of evidence for an Irish Palaeolithic lies instead in the lack of a tradition of field research in this area; the past fifty years have seen only one archaeological excavation of Pleistocene cavedeposits (at Killuragh, Co. Limerick) and there is little or no archaeological intervention, such as occurs in England, within the gravel and limestone extraction industries where such material would be expected to occur. It could be said therefore that evidence for a human presence in Palaeolithic Ireland awaits discovery. A key geographical area in the search for an Irish Palaeolithic is the Dungarvan Valley (see below). In 2003 the Dungarvan Valley Caves Project was instituted by the authors and th~s paper provides a brief account of the first two years of its work, incorporating an overview of the valley's research potential and then focussing on the results of excavations that were conducted at two caves at Ballynamuck townland (0 Drisceoil and Jennings 2004). The paper concludes with a strategy for future research