Ulster J Archaeol 58

Utilisation of the hazel bush as a resource in Mesolithic to Bronze Age Ireland. Sites where hazelnuts are present are discussed focussing on the quantity found and their possible part in the prehistoric diet before and after the advent of settled agriculture. Circumstances that may have led to the carbonisation of hazelnut shells, the probability of hazelnut storage, and some aspects of the processing of hazelnut kernels are also considered.

Recent epigraphical discoveries reveal that Irish high kings were involved in erecting High crosses on midland sites as early as the mid-ninth century, perhaps following an already established custom in Britain. It is only in the eleventh century that reliably dated inscriptions record royal patronage of Irish metalwork shrines, possibly imitating current practice on the continent. Political patronage of religious objects during the last four pre-Norman centuries in Ireland came predominantly from three of the most prominent dynasties which provided the country with high kings during that period - the Clann Cholmáin of the Southern Uí Néill in Mide, the Dal Cais in Munster and the O Conors in Connacht.

Considers the seventeenth-century conversion of the original fifteenth-century O'Donnell tower house into an `English' manor house, now thought to have been a two-stage process and more complex in its conception than previously thought.

Cilliní, burial grounds for stillborn and unbaptised children and other members of society who were considered unsuitable for burial in consecrated ground from Early Christian times to the twentieth century, have received academic attention in a number of studies across Ireland. This paper details examples in Co. Antrim and presents the results of a test study on disused graveyards in one north Antrim parish. A review of relevant historical records, fieldwork, and an oral history project identified eleven disused graveyards in the parish. Two are definitely cilliní, and a further three sites are likely to have been.

Late Mesolithic material, mostly flint, found eroding from a bank exposure situated on the River Bann. The majority of pieces were blades, core fragments and general debitage. Many of the blades have well prepared platforms, bulbs of percussion and some retouching. There are numerous very short notes without individual title from a range of experts: Alex Barker, Michael Bradle, Arthur B Busby, Karen Jones, Laurie Moseley, Patience Patterson, Pat Ravel, Robert C Scott (all on page 144); and S Alan Skinner (144-5). There follows the `Lithic analysis' by Dermot G Moore (145-7).

Whole-rock oxygen isotopic data are provided for the North Antrim porcellanites and an unprovenanced polished stone axehead whose trace element and strontium isotope geochemistry were reported previously (see 97/374).

A section of text omitted from the original article (see 99/902 for the rest of it).