Changes in the Neolithic and Bronze Age of Ireland: Based on big data research on settlement and burial records, the spatial and temporal pattern of Irish archaeological sites spans the transition between the Neolithic and Bronze Ages to explore the timing and impact of major changes in the archaeological record of this period.
A large amount of new data comes from unpublished developer-led excavations and is combined with the National Archives, published excavations, and online databases, Bayesian radiocarbon models and environments, and sample-sensitive sum radiocarbon probabilities for examining datasets.
The size and timing of the initial expansion of early Neolithic settlements, and the subsequent decline of all such activities, a pronounced boom-and-bust cycle, the late Neolithic and Bronze Age were characterized by a revival and diversification of activity.
Contextual and spatial analysis of radiocarbon data reveals finer patterns of scale than are often possible with summation probability methods: boom and bust models of prehistoric populations probably, are misunderstandings of more subtle demographic changes, simultaneous cultural changes and consequent differences in the archaeological record.
Ireland is a large island in Europe, located in the western part of the United Kingdom, divided into two regions, the northeast is Northern Ireland and part of the United Kingdom, and the rest is the Republic of Ireland.
Traditionally, much archaeological research on the Neolithic period in Ireland has focused on megalithic burial monuments, the distribution of surface finds, and the investigation of major earthworks to select the required components.
The degree of Neolithic settlement in the landscape is relatively limited, depending on field walks and analysis of the distribution of extant Neolithic, earthworks, and megalithic sites.
Despite the lack of direct archaeological evidence, colonies are thought to be ubiquitous, and perhaps with the exception of the Highlands, the distribution of visible megaliths and earthworks suggests that the presence of Neolithic people in some places could indeed serve as a proxy for settlement, although in the past there was a temptation to think that in some areas the absence of evidence of megalithic tombs was equivalent to no Neolithic people.
Other types of Neolithic and early Bronze Age settlements in Ireland have lower recovery rates than rectangular houses, although a large number of pit sites have been discovered, and other sites have been found in particular recent numbers, with burned mounds and individual tombs. The number of charred mounds in prehistoric Ireland is numerous.
But it was only in recent decades that it has been extensively excavated and dated, as a result of developer-led projects, and the most common form of single burial is the storage of human ashes in stone pits, pits or earthworks and other sites, which have been found all over the island and date back to several different periods that span almost throughout prehistory.
Early Neolithic, sites dating back to the Early Neolithic II period, in addition to excavated and obsolete sites, here include existing portals and court tombs, and no monument of any type has been thoroughly excavated or obsolete like the current settlement.
Despite the abundance of data, gaps and discontinuities in the archaeological record remain, although some of these gaps provide as much information as the problems they exist.
Over time, the Irish Neolithic became more mysterious, and the early Neolithic period was relatively archaeologically visible, causing a high degree of research interest, and before 3750 BC, there was little evidence of "Neolithic" activity in Ireland of significance.
The pressures of modern development reveal clusters of Neolithic houses that surround the north and east coasts, early Neolithic settlements, these newly discovered clusters coincide with burial landscapes that geographically seemed poised to become points of contact with the British, perhaps reflecting the initial entry points that brought about new plants, animals and ways of thinking that together made up the Neolithic period.
The sudden increase in early Neolithic activity, to some extent, beginning in the Late Neolithic period, with new pottery forms and site types, grooved pottery and pitted pottery was introduced from England, although this event is only one of many hints that Ireland and Scotland, from the middle Neolithic onwards, influenced each other.
In Ireland, the entire third millennium BC was characterized by many rapid changes in material culture, ritual practices and burial traditions, in contrast to stable pit sedimentation rates, addressing types that in many respects continued to resemble the transition of the Early to Middle Neolithic.
Despite advances in radiocarbon dating and Bayesian models, one unknown is the way in which contemporary humans witness these events. Any recognition of what appears to be relatively rapid in the archaeological record may take generations to fully express itself, and any recognition of such change must be made in the context of constant adaptation to the "real world", where environmental, economic and demographic interests compete with each other, often in a state of dynamic equilibrium, but occasionally collapse completely.
Ireland's development-led archaeology, which samples landscapes in a less biased way than is usually the case, has done much to correct the traditional, delusional illusions of evidence of prehistoric settlement.
bibliography
[1] Anderson, Dariada and the establishment of the Kingdom of Scotland.
[2] Emily Liu, Demographics from Date to Later Prehistoric Ireland? Experimental Methods for Meta-analysis of Large Sample Data 14 datasets, Archaeological Sciences, No. 40, pp. 433-438.
[3] Calibration curve of radiocarbon, sum probability distribution, and population trends of ancient Indians in North America.
[4] Barkley and Harding, Paths and Rituals: Monuments to Britain and Ireland, Oxford: The Yoke of the Oxford.
