Alice and Gwendoline Cave

The Alice and Gwendoline Cave is a limestone cave in County Clare, Ireland. It was first investigated by scholars in 1902. In 2016, a bear patella with possible butchery marks found in the cave was dated to the Upper Palaeolithic, which is potentially the oldest known evidence of human habitation in Ireland.

The Alice and Gwendoline Cave is located on the grounds of the 18th-century Edenvale House, about 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi) southwest of Ennis in Cahircalla townland. It is 260 metres north of Edenvale Lake, within a Lower Carboniferous limestone outcrop. It has two main passages, the Alice Passage and the Gwendoline Passage, and three smaller passages. There are five openings to the cave.

Alice and Gwendoline Cave was first investigated in 1902 at the direction of the Committee Appointed to Explore Irish Caves, a group of academics founded in 1901 with funding from the British Science Association and the Royal Irish Academy. The excavation was directed by Richard J. Ussher, and the standard of excavation was particularly high for the early 20th century. Ussher was assisted by National Museum of Ireland staff James Duffy and Robert Griffin. Four women, including Alice Jane and Gwendoline Clare Stacpoole—daughters of Alice Julia Stacpoole, the then-resident of Edenvale—assisted in the excavation as well. Previously called the Bull Paddock Cave, it was renamed for the two Stacpoole daughters following the excavation. During excavation, between 10,000 and 15,000 animal bone fragments were found, including that of extinct fauna. Ten human bones, two of which have been located, and more than twenty artefacts including stone tools, worked bone objects, two Viking arm-rings, iron nails, and amber beads were recovered. The strata had been disturbed, evidenced by artefacts of different periods being found together. A portion of the thousands of animal bones found in the cave was deposited in the National Museum of Ireland – Natural History in the 1920s. A human clavicle found in Alice and Gwendoline Cave was radiocarbon-dated in 2007 to 10,146–9,700 cal. BP, making it the earliest directly dated human bone in Ireland. It potentially predates the commonly accepted sta

Cave data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).