Ireland: The Ancient Past and Early Christian Ireland
Ireland: The Ancient Past and Early Christian Ireland
Questions ask you to place Ireland's first settlers, farmers and metalworkers in sequence, and to describe what changed with the coming of Christianity.
The sequence
- Mesolithic (c. 7000 BC): hunter-gatherers; Mount Sandel, Co. Derry - hazel stakes, fish bones, flint microliths.
- Neolithic (c. 4000 BC): farming, pottery, polished stone axes; Céide Fields, Co. Mayo, with field walls preserved under bog; megalithic tombs - court cairns, dolmens (portal tombs), passage tombs.
- Bronze Age (c. 2500 BC): metalworking, cist graves, fulachtaí fia, gold lunulae and torcs.
- Iron Age (c. 500 BC): La Tène metalwork, hillforts, crannógs, and later ringforts.
Early Christian Ireland From the fifth century Patrick and other missionaries spread Christianity. Monasteries such as Clonmacnoise and Glendalough became centres of learning, with scriptoria producing the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells, high crosses, round towers, and souterrains used for storage and refuge.
Worked example Newgrange, Co. Meath: a passage tomb with a corbelled roof, kerbstones carved with spirals, and a roof-box aligned so the rising sun at the winter solstice enters the chamber. What does it show? A farming community with surplus labour, engineering skill, and beliefs linking the sun, the dead and the ancestors.
Traps Claiming the Celts invaded in one wave - the evidence points to cultural contact and is debated. Saying round towers were built for monks to hide from Vikings; they were mainly bell towers and stores. Placing Newgrange after the Egyptian pyramids - it is earlier.