Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland is the first volume to be devoted solely to the Irish Neolithic, using an innovative landscape and anthropological perspective to provide significant new insights on the period. Gabriel Cooney argues that the archaeological evidence demonstrates a much more complex picture than the current orthodoxy on Neolithic Europe, with its assumption of mobile lifestyles, suggests. He integrates the study of landscape, settlement, agriculture, material culture and burial practice to offer a rounded, realistic picture of the complexities and the realities of Neolithic lives and societies in Ireland.
Atlantic Europe is the zone par excellence of megalithic monuments, which encompass a wide range of earthen and stone constructions from inpressive stone circles to modest chambered tombs. A single basic concept lies behind this volume - that the intrinsic qualities encountered within the diverse landscapes pf Atlantic Europe both informed the settings chosen for the monuments and played a role in determining their form and visual appearance. Monuments and Landscape in Atlantic Europe goes significantly beyond the limits of existing debate by inviting archaeologists from different countries with the Atlantic zone (including Britain, France, Ireland, Spain and Sweden) to examine the relationship between landscape features and prehistoric monuments in their specialist regions. By placing the issue within a broader regional and intellectual context, the authors illustrate the diversity of current archaeological ideas and approaches converging around this central theme.
This is the third revision of this seminal work. Co-authored by original author Frank Mitchell and now Michael Ryan, the result is a stunning collaboration between masters giving all the elements of the original book, modified, updated and further enhanced by the inclusion of a new narrative of Irish archaeology from the Stone Age to the Norman Invasion. Together they have successfully undertaken the daunting task of giving in one book the story of the shaping of the land from the beginning of time until now, by all tbe varying forces of nature, sea, climate, man and machine. The story takes in the shaping of the crust, the movement of glaciers, the first men and their primitive agriculture, their buildings and their effect on the forests, the growth of bogs, new migrations, the rise of the monasteries of the Early Christians and the castles of conquest, the devastation of war, urban growth, modern agriculture and afforestation, all set against the backdrop of the landscape, arguably one Ireland's most precious resources.
The Neolithic of Britain and Ireland provides a synthesis of this dynamic period of prehistory from the end of the Mesolithic through to the early Beaker period. Drawing on new excavations and the application of new scientific approaches to data from this period, this book considers both life and death in the Neolithic. It offers a clear and concise introduction to this period but with an emphasis on the wider and on-going research questions. It is an important text for students new to the study of this period of prehistory as well as acting as a reference for students and scholars already researching this area. The book begins by considering the Mesolithic prelude, specifically the millennium prior to the start of the Neolithic in Britain and Ireland. It then goes on to consider what life was like for people at the time, alongside the monumental record and how people treated the dead. This is presented chronologically, with separate chapters on the early Neolithic, middle Neolithic, late Neolithic and early Beaker periods. Finally it considers future research priorities for the study of the Neolithic.
The Irish Neolithic has been dominated by the study of megalithic tombs, but the defining element of Irish settlement evidence is the rectangular timber Early Neolithic house, the numbers of which have more than quadrupled in the last ten years. The substantial Early Neolithic timber house was a short-lived architectural phenomenon of as little as 90 years, perhaps like short-lived Early Neolithic long barrows and causewayed enclosures. This book explores the wealth of evidence for settlement and houses throughout the Irish Neolithic, in relation to Britain and continental Europe. More importantly it incorporates the wealth of new, and often unpublished, evidence from developer-led archaeological excavations and large grey-literature resources. The settlement evidence scattered across the landscape, and found as a result of developer-funded work, provides the social context for the more famous stone monuments that have traditionally shaped our views of the Neolithic in Ireland. It provides the first comprehensive review of the Neolithic settlement of Ireland, which enables a more holistic and meaningful understanding of the Irish Neolithic.
This collection of 24 papers aims to reconsider the nature and significance of the Irish Sea as an area of cultural interaction during the Neolithic period. The traditional character of work across this region has emphasised the existence of prehistoric contact, with sea routes criss-crossing between Ireland, the Isle of Man, Anglesey and the British mainland. A parallel course of investigation, however, has demonstrated that the British and Irish Neolithics were in many ways different, with distinct indigenous patterns of activity and social practices. The recent emphasis on regional studies has further produced evidence for parallel yet different processes of cultural change taking place throughout the British Isles as a whole. This volume brings together some of these regional perspectives and compares them across the Irish Sea area. The authors consider new ways to explain regional patterning in the use of material objects and relate them to past practices and social strategies. Were there practices that were shared across the Irish Sea area linking different styles of monuments and material culture, or were the media intrinsic to the message? The volume is based on papers presented at a conference held at the University of Manchester in 2002.
These essays examine for the first time the relationship between landscape and prehistoric monuments across Europe, placing the issue in a regional and intellectual context.
Landscapes are not just backdrops to human action; people make them and are made by them. How people understand and engage with their material world depends upon particularities of time and place. These understandings are dynamic, variable, contradictory and open-ended. Landscapes are thus always evolving and are often volatile and contested. They are also always on the move - people may or may not be rooted, but they have 'legs'. From prehistoric times onwards people have travelled, but the process of people-on-the-move - as tourists, or on global business, as migrant workers or political or economic refugees - has vastly accelerated. How and why do people who share the same landscape have different and often violently opposed ways of understanding its significance? How do people-on-the-move make sense of the unfamiliar? How do they create a sense of place? How do they rework the memories of places left behind? There is nothing easeful about the landscapes discussed in this book, which are often harsh-edged and troubled both socially and politically. The contributors tackle contested notions of landscape to explain the key role it plays in creating identity and shaping human behaviour. This landmark study offers an important contribution towards an understanding of the complexity of landscape.
The past few years have seen an upsurge in the numbers of known Neolithic settlements in Ireland. Many of these sites have been excavated by archaeologists based in field units, but few are well-known to the wider archaeological community. The papers in this volume which were presented at a conference held at Queen's University, Belfast in 2001, provided a forum for a discussion of the new Neolithic material from Ireland in its wider geographical context. Although the bulk of the emerging Irish settlement evidence relates to substantial houses, many of these papers consider wider themes, including issues of contact and communication along the sea routes and coastal margins of north-west Europe, questions of diversity and regional patterns of sedentism and mobility, and variations in regional food production strategies. The volume includes twenty-six papers representing a series of studies ranging geographically from Orkney to the French Atlantic facade. Contents: Introduction ( Ian Armit, Eileen Murphy, Eiméar Nelis and Derek Simpson ); French Connections I: Spreading the marmites thinly ( Alison Sheridan ); French Connections II: Of cows and men ( Anne Tresset ); Contemplating some awful(ly interesting) vistas: Importing cattle and red deer into prehistoric Ireland ( Peter Woodman and Margaret McCarthy ); Terminology, time and space: Labels, radiocarbon chronologies and a 'Neolithic' of small worlds ( Patrick Ashmore ); Rooted or routed? Landscapes of Neolithic settlement in Ireland ( Gabriel Cooney ); The early farming settlement of south western England in the Neolithic ( Roger Mercer ); Neolithic settlement in the lowlands of Scotland: A preliminary survey ( Gordon Barclay ); Once upon a time Skara Brae was unique ( David Clarke ); The Drowners: Permanence and transience in the Hebridean Neolithic ( Ian Armit ); Neolithic Northton: A review of the evidence ( Eileen Murphy and Derek Simpson ); Billown and the Neolithic of the Isle of Man ( Timothy Darvill ); The Early Neolithic and the Manx environment ( Peter J Davey and Jim B Innes ); Rheast Buigh, Patrick: Middle Neolithic exploitation of the Manx uplands? ( Peter J Davey and Jenny Woodcock ); What do we mean by Neolithic settlement? Some approaches, 10 years on ( Alex Gibson ). The Irish 'house boom'. Irish Neolithic houses ( Ian Armit, Eileen Murphy, Eiméar Nelis and Derek Simpson ); Excavations at Thornhill, Co. Londonderry ( Paul Logue ); Neolithic houses in Ballyharry townland, Islandmagee, Co. Antrim ( Dermot G Moore ); Neolithic structure at Drummenny Lower, Co. Donegal: An environmental perspective ( Cathy Dunne ); The excavation of a Neolithic house at Enagh townland, Co. Derry ( Cormac McSparran ); Archaeological excavations of a Neolithic settlement at Coolfore, Co. Louth ( Cóilín O Drisceoil ); A Neolithic house in Cloghers, Co. Kerry ( Jacinta Kiely ); Neolithic beginnings on Roughan Hill and the Burren ( Carleton Jones ). Irish Neolithic settlement architecture: A reappraisal ( Sarah Cross ); Donegore and Lyles Hill, Neolithic enclosed sites in Co. Antrim: The lithic assemblages ( Eiméar Nelis ); Neolithic expectations ( Richard Bradley ).
