Sediment Coring Work on Rathlin

Monday 31 October 2016

Maarten van Hardenbroek from the University of Southampton sent us this message about their recent research work on the island:

"Our team of five scientists from Southampton had a fantastic week on Rathlin. We cored three suitable lakes, including Ushet Lough, Cleggan Lough, and a small lough along the road near the East Lighthouse. In all lakes we found 2-3 meters of organic sediment until we hit gravels underneath. These gravel deposits have likely been laid down since the last ice age, roughly 12,000 years ago.

We'll need to do some further analysis of the material to be sure if the records contain the full 12,000 year sequence, or whether there are some gaps. We are quite confident that the cores at least cover the last 1500 years that include Viking occupation as well as the large increase and decline in population in the 18th and 19th century. Now it's time for us to do some work in the laboratory and find more funding for the project. We'll let you know more about our finds as soon as we have them.

We would like to thank all of you that came to our presentation in the Branson Centre with questions and very useful comments about the lakes and archaeology of the island. We also thank landowners for their permission and the RDCA for their help to organise this trip. Any questions, please contact Maarten van Hardenbroek (vanhardenbroek@soton.ac.uk) or Tony Brown (tony.brown@soton.ac.uk)."