People, Landscapes and Mobility in Mesolithic Ireland
Thomas Kador
Supervisor: Dr. Graeme Warren
Funded by: The Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Also supported by: the Humanities Institute of Ireland
Abstract
My research aims to presents a framework for understanding people’s mobility in early prehistoric Ireland in its social context. This will offer a new perspective for approaching the earlier phases of human activity on the island, including the mesolithic and the earlier parts of the neolithic periods. The objective is to produce a study that explores the relationship between people's movements through the land, on one hand, and their identity, ideology and socio-economic life sphere, on the other. To be able to do this the project will assess how this relationship is manifested in the form of archaeological data for early prehistoric Ireland.
One of the project’s main contributions will be the provision of a methodology that weaves together the material, spatial and temporal aspects of people's mobility. In other words this methodology shall help to establish a practical and theoretical model capable of utilising the archaeological material available for early Irish prehistory, in conjunction with other landscape and environmental data. This is done with a view to gain new insights into the manner in which people's lives were structured around their movements. For the practical application of the methodology I have selected a number of case study areas. These are located in distinct regions of Ireland and represent very different aspects of the Irish landscape. The first is located in County Antrim, northeast Ireland and has served as a pilot study which presented the research for my MA thesis (1). A second area was selected in southeast Ireland, mainly centring on the wider region of Waterford harbour.
In approaching the data I am utilising a number of methods including landscape archaeological fieldwork techniques and surveying strategies in the study areas, lithic analysis of material already held in collections, statistical analyses of the data gathered as well as Geographic Information Systems (GIS). By combining these different techniques I hope to gain a better understanding of the relationships between people's use of early prehistoric technologies and their movements in the landscape. This understanding will then help me to further shape and define my approach and research methodology as well as inform the theoretical framework of the project.
Ultimately my aim is to produce a critical, detailed and comprehensive study of early Irish prehistory based on comparative and diachronic research in a number of regional case study areas. The results of this study shall be expressed in the form of a narrative, concerning people's lives and activities, which views social and ideological (in short human) concerns as central themes, essential to obtain an understanding of prehistoric lifeways. In producing such a narrative the project will provide a contribution at the forefront of current debates in archaeology as well as other humanities disciplines and the social sciences.
(1) Kador, T. 2003 Moving off the Beaten Track: mobility as a way of understanding the mesolithic in northeast Ireland. MA thesis in Landscape Archaeology, University College Dublin