CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY IN THE IRISH NEOLITHIC THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF PASSAGE-TOMB BUILDING (original) (raw)
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Abstract The Chalcolithic wedge tombs of Ireland represent a dramatic re-emergence of megalithism over a millennium after most Neolithic and Irish megaliths were built and many centuries after most had gone out of use. This resurgence of building monuments associated with the dead may well have been associated with a period of social instability caused by the expansion of exchange networks and associated with the introduction of metallurgy. Regional, group, and individual identities all seem to have undergone change at this time, probably in a dynamic demographic context. Variations in the distribution and scale of wedge tombs in Co. Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, provide an interesting study that may reveal a pattern of clan affiliations, status competition, and enduring links to an important and ancient locale. Keywords: Chalcolithic, megalith, monument, status competition, identity, Ireland, landscape, wedge tomb
The Chalcolithic wedge tombs of Ireland represent a dramatic re-emergence of megalithism over a millenium after most Neolithic megaliths were build and many centuries after most had gone out of use. This resurgence of building monuments associated with the dead may well have been associated with a period of social instability caused by the expansion of exchange networks and associated with the introduction of metallurgy. Regional, group, and individual identities all seem to have undergone change at this time, probably in a dynamic demographic context. Variations in the distribution and scale of wedge tombs in Co. Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, provide an interesting study that may reveal a pattern of clan affiliations, status competition, and enduring links to an important and ancient locale.
The house and group identity in the Irish Neolithic
A connection is frequently made between the arrival of farming in Ireland and the beginnings of domestic life 'proper', i.e., the foundation of a permanent or semipermanent base around which activities and events relating to the agricultural year are focused. The appearance in the archaeological record of substantial timber buildings associated with early Neolithic ceramics, lithics and food waste would on fi rst inspection seem to bear this out. Emerging detail on their construction, use and abandonment suggests that they represented a considerable social investment for at least several generations during the early Neolithic. The domestic architecture that characterises later periods-the middle and late Neolithic-leaves very different and generally more ephemeral traces in the archaeological record as well as diverging quite dramatically in terms of shape and design. Perhaps most signifi cantly, these later shifts appear to coincide with changes in the form and scale of funerary and ceremonial architecture such as passage tombs and timber circles. In this paper, it is argued that exploring the space, content and design of these various domestic settings through the Neolithic can bring us closer to understanding earlier prehistoric society as a whole.
In Müller, J. Hinz, M., & Wunderlich, M. (eds) Megaliths, Societies, Landscapes. Early Monumentality and Social Differentiation in Neolithic Europe, 983 – 1004. Bonn: Habelt Verlag., 2019
A distinct group of megaliths in western Ireland is defined and described. These north Munster atypical court tombs are related to the more common Irish megaliths known as court tombs and also to monuments even farther afield, but the north Munster megaliths are architecturally distinct and geographically isolated. These north Munster atypical court tombs are associated, at least in part, with the widespread Carinated Bowl tradition of the Early Neolithic but north Munster societies followed a trajectory distinct from other regions as the Neolithic progressed. Compared to areas farther to the north and east in Ireland where there is evidence for dynamic social structures and consequent efforts to legitimate and demonstrate social statuses, Neolithic north Munster societies appear to have been smaller, more stable and less open to innovations. The geography of Ireland appears to have helped separate north Munster Neolithic societies from regions with more dynamic demographic, social and ritual milieus, but north Munster was not completely isolated. The evidence from the excavated north Munster atypical court tomb at Parknabinnia shows that some distant events may well have influenced practices in the far west of Ireland.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2015
Archaeologists studying multi-component cemeteries have argued that the societies who reused cemeteries were motivated by connecting to the past. However, often overlooked are the potential roles of mortuary events and sites as key social and political venues for creating, contesting, and unmaking relationships and identities for the later community independent of a connection to the past. In this paper, I explore the social and political roles that mortuary rituals at the Mound of the Hostages, Tara, Ireland played during the Middle Neolithic (3350-2800 BC) and Early Bronze Age (2300-1700 BC). Tara’s emergence as a regional mortuary center occurred only several hundred years after its initial reuse by Early Bronze Age peoples. Just as importantly, the burial activity that marked Tara as special in the Early Bronze Age was very brief, revealing that the regional centralization at Tara was ultimately unsuccessful. The analysis of cemetery formation at Tara is only possible due to the development of a fine-grained site specific chronology. These results have broad implications for how we understand cemetery formation, the reuse of mortuary monuments, and the dynamics of social complexity in prehistoric societies.
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 83:155-188, , 2017
This paper examines the relationship between the use of late Irish passage tombs and the development of the British and Irish Grooved Ware complex, including its Orcadian origins. The architectural forms of these passage tombs and their associated material culture, symbolic repertoires, and depositional practices in Ireland and Orkney indicate sustained connections between people in these places. It is argued that these interactions strongly influenced the development of Grooved Ware and its associated material culture in Orkney and beyond. The results of recent dating programmes are synthesised, and the character of depositional practices from 3300 to 2700 cal BC are reassessed to highlight continuities in traditions of practice and representation. Together, these indicate that the adoption of Grooved Ware in Ireland did not herald an era of large-scale social transformation and that the primary use of late passage tombs did not suddenly cease at the end of the 4th millennium BC. Instead they continued as foci for largely unchanged forms of ceremonial activity until 2450 cal BC as part of a series of ongoing social and cultural shifts in people's material culture and practices. It is argued that the current periodisation of the late 4th-3rd millennia BC in Ireland unduly emphasises a disjuncture between the Irish Middle and Late Neolithic. An alternative view of social and cultural change that refocuses attention on social agency is proposed.
Archaeological Dialogues, 2022
This article reassesses the social significance of Early Neolithic chambered tombs. It critically evaluates inferences about social organization drawn from tomb architecture and interpretations of kinship based on aDNA analyses of human remains from tombs. Adopting the perspective that kinship is a multifaceted and ongoing field of practice, it argues that the arrangement of tomb chambers was related to the negotiation of Early Neolithic kinship. Drawing together inferences about biological relatedness from aDNA analyses with interpretations of chamber arrangements, it suggests that variation in the architectural arrangements and sequential modification of chambered tombs relates to different ways of negotiating aspects of kinship, particularly descent and affinity. It presents interpretations of how kinship was negotiated at Early Neolithic tombs in different regions of Britain and Ireland and concludes that it is increasingly possible to gauge pattern and diversity in Neolithic ne...