Mount Sandel Mesolithic site

About

The Mount Sandel Mesolithic site is in Coleraine, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, near the River Bann and just to the east of the Iron Age Mount Sandel Fort. It is one of the oldest archaeological sites in Ireland with carbon dating indicating an age of 9,000 years old (7,000BC). Gwendoline Cave in County Clare is the only site in Ireland with evidence of human occupation that pre-dates this location. Mount Sandel Mesolithic site is a Scheduled Historic Monument in the townland of Mount Sandel, in Causeway Coast and Glens Council area, at Grid Ref: C8533 3076. It was excavated by Peter Woodman in the 1970s.

It has been said that "The Mt. Sandel excavations dominate the picture of the Early Mesolithic (in Ireland) as so few other sites have been excavated and fully published, let alone found. Not only that, but there was evidence for dwellings – until recently it was not until the Neolithic that there was again evidence for houses in Ireland." These excavations revealed the remains of no fewer than ten structures, although these were not all contemporaneous, and a large number of pits, post-holes and hearths. When the structures could be made out most of them were apparently...