Thinking about our Neolithic predecessors hanging out in the Phoenix Park, poking the winkles out of these tiny shells and stringing them together to make themselves fancy. They were found buried with two male skeletons. I wonder who made them -women, perhaps, or children with their nimble fingers? Apparently they were originally brightly coloured: yellow, red, brown, green, purple. Pretty!

Left: the shells as they look today. Right: an AI-assisted imagining of how they might have looked 5500 years ago. See the objects in the National Museum of Ireland’s collection: Shell Necklace