IT Sligo archaeologist leads team to stunning discovery
An archaeology team, led by Dr Marion Dowd of IT Sligo, has just discovered a “stunning” 1,150-year-old Viking necklace in the Burren, County Clare. The team has been excavating Glencurran cave in the Burren National Park since 2004. Dowd described the find as a “significant discovery” for archaeologists. “The necklace is the largest Viking necklace to have been found in Ireland. There are instances where small numbers of Viking beads are recovered, but nothing like what has been discovered at Glencurran,” she stated. ”It really is puzzling as to how this necklace from a high status Viking came to be in a cave in the Burren. There is no parallel for it in Ireland and it is unusual on a number of fronts.” Dowd suspects that the necklace may have been traded between Vikings in Limerick and Gaelic chieftains in the Burren.
The excavations have been funded by the Royal Irish Academy and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.
The find was feature on RTE news see: http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0429/6news_av.html?2745353,null,230 for full details.
