Fishing the Mesolithic way

This story comes from the Irish Times Sept 23rd … an archaeologist happened to be out walking and came across some weirs and dams constructed to trap smelt on Connemara’s Errislannan peninsular (see www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0923/1224279504347-pf.html ). He looked at what appeared to be a series of stone ponds, channels and dams that linked the bay to several inner lagoons, as if channelling the fish into them. According to the fisherman the method goes back generations as the smelt provided food in early spring when little other resources were available. He now thinks the fish have been trapped in this manner all the way back to the Mesolithic era.