Settlement in Neolithic Ireland - Awarded 2007
Jessica SmythSupervisors
Prof. Gabriel Cooney, Archaeology
Funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences
IRCHSS Government of Ireland Scholar
Abstract
Large-scale investment in Ireland’s infrastructure under the National Development Plan has led to significant transects of the Irish countryside being archaeologically monitored and excavated. One of the most exciting series of discoveries has been that of Neolithic houses. In the past two to three years, archaeological investigation has dramatically increased the number of Neolithic houses previously documented in Ireland. Nearly 30 new buildings have been uncovered in high quality excavation. Already in 2004, discoveries at Loughbrickland, Co. Down and at Granny and Newrath, Co. Kilkenny have added to the long list of new sites spread over nearly every part of the country - from Drummenny in Co. Donegal to Barnagore in Co. Cork and from Kishoge in Co. Dublin to Gortaroe in Co. Mayo. To date 7 structures have been excavated at a quarry at Corbally, Co. Kildare with multiple buildings also uncovered at Thornhill in Co. Derry. These latter in particular represent a new kind of data for the Irish Neolithic.
Until now, relatively little in-depth work has been undertaken to identify the nature of this settlement evidence, to tease out the settlement patterns and architectural traditions and to place them in their wider context. The current situation is providing important opportunities to look in real terms at the specifics of settlement and living in houses in the Neolithic, rather than merely charting the presence and location of a few buildings or adding to a now simplistic and tired debate of sedentism versus mobility.
My research will also attempt to tackle the complacency that often comes with the identification of a house in the archaeological record. It is too easy to view the house as an unchanging icon through time, as the major constituent of the human feelings of belonging and settled-ness. Many British authors, working in the context of a dearth of evidence for structural settlement evidence in England in the Neolithic, have demonstrated the myriad ways in which settlement and tenureship can be constituted, through monuments, livestock, relationships with the land and observance of the cycles of life. The mere existence of a four-walled building is not enough for a discussion of settlement and living in the Neolithic. We need to incorporate the house into its landscape, of the living world and of the mind, if we are to say anything about the character of Neolithic Ireland.