The geographic and temporal origins of dogs remain controversial. We generated genetic sequences from 59 ancient dogs and a complete (28x) genome of a late Neolithic dog (dated to ~4800 calendar years before the present) from Ireland. Our analyses revealed a deep split separating modern East Asian and Western Eurasian dogs. Surprisingly, the date of this divergence (~14,000 to 6400 years ago) occurs commensurate with, or several millennia after, the first appearance of dogs in Europe and East Asia. Additional analyses of ancient and modern mitochondrial DNA revealed a sharp discontinuity in haplotype frequencies in Europe. Combined, these results suggest that dogs may have been domesticated independently in Eastern and Western Eurasia from distinct wolf populations. East Eurasian dogs were then possibly transported to Europe with people, where they partially replaced European Paleolithic dogs.

The time dependency of the regional difference ΔR in the marine radiocarbon reservoir correction is an important issue for the calibration of marine radiocarbon ages and also provides information about past ocean circulation changes. Few measurements of Holocene reservoir corrections are available for the climatically important North Atlantic. We determined ΔR for intervals during the past 6100 years before present (BP) by comparing radiocarbon ages of 31 marine and terrestrial sample pairs from 14 archaeological sites from the coast of Ireland, Scotland and the Orkney Islands. We find that, while a time dependency in ΔR for this region cannot be ruled out, within the error of the determinations, the ΔR appears to have been constant for at least the last 2000 and possibly the last 6000 years. This work results in a recommendation for ΔR of 33 +93 for the region.

Chemical signatures from Bronze Age animal bones show that prehistoric humans had a major impact on the nitrogen cycle in Ireland.

The early medieval settlement landscape of Ireland is one of the richest archaeological landscapes in the world. A long tradition of archaeological excavation of early medieval Irish settlements has produced a range of evidence relating to the daily lives and dwelling practices of the inhabitants of these settlements, as well as evidence for their use of the surrounding landscapes (see O'Sullivan, A. 2008; Edwards 2005). Such evidence can be used to help reconstruct the social, ideological and economic relationships that bound Irish society at this time together (see, for example, Stout, M. 1997). Early medieval settlement has long been the focus of scholarly interest, and a range of studies have described its classic site types-whether these be raths (

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