Pirate Ports and Harbours of West Cork in the Early Seventeenth Century

In the early part of the seventeenth century in Ireland select harbours along the southwest coast of Munster acted as the North Atlantic headquarters for pirates, primarily made up of English mariners. The places picked by the pirates as their bases were spatially strategic and three harbours in particular dominated this West Cork landscape—Baltimore, Leamcon and Crookhaven. Complicit English officers facilitated this activity and pirates and their families settled on the estates of the local officials while others used this pirate landscape as a staging point for plundering adventures further afield. As a consequence, piracy in Irish waters at that time had a profound influence on local economies, social activities and, in some cases, political events. Indeed the tolerance shown to it in the early seventeenth century in the southwest may be explained by the fact that it facilitated the colonial effort ongoing under the Munster Plantation and thus, inadvertently, suited the purposes of official government.     

Biostratigraphic Evidence Relating to the Age‐Old Question of Hannibal's Invasion of Italy,II: Chemical Biomarkers and Microbial Signatures

As discussed in Part I, a large accumulation of mammalian faeces at the mire site in the upper Guil Valley near Mt. Viso, dated to 2168 cal ¹⁴C yr., provides the first evidence of the passage of substantial but indeterminate numbers of mammals within the time frame of the Punic invasion of Italia. Specialized organic biomarkers bound up in a highly convoluted and bioturbated bed constitute an unusual anomaly in a histosol comprised of fibric and hemist horizons that are usually expected to display horizontal bedding. The presence of deoxycholic acid and ethylcoprostanol derived from faecal matter, coupled with high relative numbers of Clostridia 16S rRNA genes, suggests a substantial accumulation of mammalian faeces at the site over 2000 years ago. The results reported here constitute the first chemical and biological evidence of the passage of large numbers of mammals, possibly indicating the route of the Hannibalic army at this time. Combined with the geological analysis reported in Part I, these data provide a background supporting the need for further historical archaeological exploration in this area.