Donal Hickey: Climate change could destroy buried archaeological treasures

If soils dry out, or are washed away by floods, oxygen gets in allowing decomposition to start and precious artefacts can soon disappear

Ned Kelly, head of Antiquities at the National Museum, with 'Cashel Man' - the oldest ‘fleshed body’ in Ireland, dating to 2000BC, found in a Bord na Mona bog in 2011.

We live in hope of another fine summer that could, however, surprise us by revealing some of the landscape’s secrets. With hotter, drier summers and, conversely, longer periods of heavy rainfall, previously unknown treasures that have lain beneath the surface for thousands of years are being exposed.

In the heatwave summer of 2018, for instance, photographer Anthony Murphy was using a drone when he uncovered the outline of a monument in the Boyne Valley, Co Meath.