Mesolithic Stone Tools and the Organization of Technology at Kenure, Ireland

Summary

During the late 1950s, the avocational archaeologist Gwendoline Stacpoole collected a sizable assemblage of stone tools from farm fields along Ireland's east coast near the town of Kenure, Rush, County Dublin. Stacpoole worked in collaboration with G.F. Mitchell at Trinity College, Dublin, and the assemblage from Kenure was ultimately donated to the National Museum of Ireland. In the summer of 2014, I analyzed a considerable sample of Stacpoole's collection from Kenure and this paper presents the results of this analysis. This paper comes to three main conclusions: (1) I generally support initial assessments of the chronology of the assemblage as belonging to the late Mesolithic on the basis of formal tool typology; (2) the characteristics of the assemblage suggest a pattern of expedient knapping of locally available glacial till flints and cherts; (3) in spite of shortcomings concerning the provenience and chronology of the Kenure assemblage, it has much to offer our knowledge of Middle-to-Upper Holocene patterns of human economic organization in eastern Ireland. I conclude by offering some directions for future research for this and other surface-collected lithic assemblages from along the County Dublin coastline.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

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