Ancient Ireland

• Mesolithic

• Neolithic

• Bronze Age

• Iron Age (Celts)

• Early Christian Ireland

Stone Age Ireland

The Mesolithic Period

• Middle Stone Age.

• 7000BC.

• First settlers.

• Ice Age – sea levels lower as water locked up in the ice. Land bridges.

• Evidence: from archaeological excavations e.g. Mount Sandel in Co. Derry.

• Houses: circular, wooden frame tied at top, covered with hides grass or bushes. Post-holes left behind.

• Food: nomadic hunter-gatherers (wild boar, duck, deer, fish, berries). Cooked on a spit.

• Clothes: hides cleaned with stone scrapers and sewn together with bone needles.

• Tools and Weapons: flint stone - axes, spears, knives and scrapers.

The Neolithic Period• New Stone Age.

• 4000BC.

• First farmers arrived by dugout canoe.

• Mesopotamia (Iran and Iraq) is where farming began!

• Evidence: Lough Gur in Limerick, Céide Fields in Mayo = archaeological evidence of stone walls for farming.

• Houses: rectangular, posts, wattle and daub (wattle = woven branches as walls; daub = mud, straw, blood as plaster), thatched roof, hearth inside and hole for chimney in roof.

• Food: farming and hunting and gathering.

• Farm animals were cattle, pigs, sheep and goats.

• Mattock and wooden plough used to grow wheat and barley.

• Grain ground using a quern stone.

• Food cooked on a spit.

• Started to make pottery from clay e.g. bowls, plates.

• Clothes: same as Mesolithic but started to weave wool from sheep and use dyes from berries.

• Tools and weapons: Porcellanite started to be used – strongera ndtoughter stone. Found in Antrim and Rathin Island. Flint stone, axes, spears, knives and scrapers. Now they are polished. Pottery is used for storing food and in burials.

Neolithic Burial Customs and Religion

• Megaliths = large stones.

• Megalithic tombs = burial sites. Usually cremated and ashes put in pots inside the following:

• Court Cairns: northern half of the country, ‘A’ shaped, court for ceremonies, all covered in stones.

• Dolmens/Portal Tombs: a huge stone table. 2 or 3 large stones upright with capstone on top. Covered in stones.

• Passage Tombs: Newgrange, Co.Meath. Corbelled roof = overlapping walls which builds the roof roof box = square stone opening – winter solstice?.

The Bronze Age• 2000BC.

• Bronze = copper and tin.

• Smelting = melting of the rock to take copper out.

• Copper from Mount Gabriel in Cork.

• Tin from Cornwall.

• Houses: circular, posts, wattle and daub, thatch, hearth inside and hole in roof. Ditch and fence around houses.

• Food: same as Neolithic but fulachta fiadh used as well as spits and copper cauldrons.

• Tools and weapons: bronze, sickles, spades axes, spears, swords.

• Jewellery: bronze but also gold (from Wicklow mountains.

• e.g.lunale and torcs.

• Smiths made jewellery.

• Broighter Hoard, 1896 Co. Derry – discovery of bronze age artefacts.

Bronze Age Tombs and Burial Customs

• Cist Graves = pit in the ground lined with stone slabs. Cremated remains or bodies lie in crouched position. Personal belongings left for afterlife.

• Wedge tomb = large flat stones – cremated and ashes in pots – most common bronze age tomb in Ireland.

• Stone circles also found – burial? Calendar?

The Iron Age (The Celts)

• pg 32 to 40.

• Iron Age started around 1400BC.

• Came to Ireland when the Celts arrived in 500BC.

Evidence1. Archaeological evidence:

Comment on:

• Hallstatt

• La Tène

2. Greek and Roman writers.

Task:

• Write 3 points on this.

3. Irish sources:

• Writing soon followed Christianity and the Celts wrote down and copied the laws they used to govern their society – Brehon Laws.

• Tradition of storytelling and the monks wrote these stories down e.g. Táin Bó Cuailgne.

• Monks kept yearly records of main events – annals.

Celtic SocietyExplain the following key terms and comment on their role within Celtic society:

• Tuath.

• Derbhfine.

• Rí.

• Warriors.

• Aos Dána.

• Judges.

• Druids.

• Doctors.

• Filí.

• Bards.

• Craftspeople.

• Farmers.

• Commoners or Slaves.

• Women.

Settlements/HousesComment on the following four types of Celtic settlement:

1. Ring-forts (raths/cashels)

2. Crannógs

3. Hill-forts

4. Promontory forts

Houses were built in a similar way as during the Bronze Age.

Souterrains = underground passageways used for hiding, escape and storing/cool food.

Food• Farming important for most Celts.

• Cattle, sheep and pigs kept.

• Meat consumed and skin used for clothes.

• Made dairy products.

• Under Brehon Law, wealth was measured in cattle.

• Used salt to preserve food.

• Hunted and gathered also.

• Cooked on spits, cauldrons over fire and still used fulachta fiadh.

• Wheat (bread), oats (porridge) and barley (ale) grown and made.

• Rotary quern stone used to ground the crop.

• Feasting important. Poems, stories, music, ficheall (chess) baire (hurling).

Clothing and Jewellery

• They cared about their appearance.

• Linen and wool for clothes.

• Men wore = Léine (knee length linen tunic) tied at the waist by a crois.

• Women wore = ankle length linen tunics.

• Both wore woollen cloaks in winter = brats, pinned with gold/silver brooch.

• Rich people = clothes dyed in bright colours.

• Men and women wore make up from berries/herbs etc.

• Earrings, gold torcs, collars, bracelets.

• Poor men wore wool trousers.

• Poor women wore plain wool tunic.

Religion and Burial Customs• Believed in many gods.

• An Dagda = chief god and also god of the after life.

• Lugh = god of war. Festival of Lughnasa held in August in his honour.

• Brigid = main goddess.

• Boann = river goddess - River Boyne.

• Worshiped in woods and beside streams.

• Oak tree was sacred.

• Druids - white linen tunics.

• Animal an human sacrifices.

• Cremation and burial of ashes with belongings -believed in afterlife.

• Ogham = Celtic writing - earliest form of writing in Ireland.

• Ogham stones - marked the graves/boundaries of land etc.

• The Celts became Christians in the fifth century.

• Druids lost their power.