New Book Thread!

Now reading: The Pre Hostory of Britain and Ireland 2nd edition.

Despite being far from the known Tin mines, the highest density of Bronze weapons and tools are found in the River Valleys, especially the Thames. The First settlers in Ireland came over by Boat after the land bridge to Britain disappeared in 8000 BC.

The “High vs Low” artifact zones across different pre historical models back to the thirties. The important thing is that English lowlands constituted a separate zone even in earliest artifact cultures.

Britain went from a barren half ice covered grassland to a dense forrest with parries in less than a thousand years.

The Waterways were the main arteries of human movement, a fact only established after aerial photography and artifact digs deemphasized Bronze Age hill forts

Ancient Waterway migration and trade maps of intense use.

After the Early Farmers came to Britain and Ireland, the human populations soared. The Western Hunter Gatherers may not have even been very significant populations. All the animals of agriculture arrive with the EEFs, suggesting the existence of larger carrier vessels.

From the beginning of Neolithic Farming in Britain and Ireland we have evidence of continued links to the continent by trade. Alpine Jadeite axes were particularly coveted.

Farming itself exploded across Britain and Ireland, drastically changing the environment, but field yields actually declined from the first hundred years. Probably an effect of spending the soil, but subsequent long term abandonment probably indicates turmoil in late4th millennia

The earliest of the mortuary monuments were the “Portal Tombs” initially closed on all sides and put either beside a Neolithic house or on top of an existing house in some cases. These are the most similar to French monuments of the same era of Farmer expansion.

Irish Cairns seem to have occurred almost simultaneously and began as a local form in 3800BC, but like the Portal Tombs, they are built next to or on top of houses. We see clearly a growing sophistication of stone chambers and passageways in the 4th Millenium.

Civil Strife in Early Farmer Britain and Ireland appears to have been more than previous scholarship was comfortable in admitting. 4-8% of skulls had head injuries. The famous Iron Age Fort, Hambledon Hill, was used for the same purpose 3000 years before.

Human Bones, Animal bones, and even opium poppy was found in the Etton enclosure. It seems like a party.

Hambledon hills’s plethoric stock of of damaged young Skulls speaks to a number of possibilities.

The cursus-monuments were perhaps the most labour intensive Neolithic monuments period. Half a million man hours for 10kms of “road”

The cursus themselves are barely visible today, but the “road marks” are sometimes very striking. The Rudston Monolith for example.

Important page for end of the Middle Neolithic. Around 3300 BC, land cultivation dropped off and the amount of remains with serious inflicted injuries grew. Early Farmer populations seem to have experienced Political crises and total war as the first hill enclosures are built.

The Passage Tomb represented the most significant development in late Neolithic architecture. Though these types of tombs originated in Spain and France (demonstrating Atlantic trade) they would reach the height of their form in the Isles, especially in Ireland.

In the Boyne Valley of Ireland the function of the Passage Tomb changed. Decoration drastically increases in complexity, evidence of feasting appears in ruins, the Tombs become monumental in size, and seeming closer to temples in function. They play on cosmological phenomena.

The evolution of Passage Tomb megaliths in Orkney reflects the Irish development. Earlier megaliths merely held the dead, while later became depositories of domestic and celebratory artifacts, of allowed certain light inside.

As the book was being written, aerial photography revealed population enclosures in the Boyne Valley that are yet to be excavated. Similar breakthroughs occurred just last decade with the excavation of the Ness of Brodgar, the most complete Neolithic settlement to date.

Like previous henges Stonehenge was initially wooden and was replaced with stones while entrenchments were dug. But within the century new things appeared, a new metal, a new pottery style, and a new race. This race was to punish the great crimes of EEF civilization.

Ross Island off the West coast of Ireland is the first known copper mine, and the entry of the Beakers. In England, beaker people rapidly become the absolute majority of remains. In Ireland however, there seems to be a few centuries of lag even though copper appears here first.

The Beaker folk rapidly spread their metallurgical skill and began augmenting it with tin from Cornwall 400 years after the first beaker mine appears in Ross Island. Ross Island itself has plenty of beaker pottery, but this is less common in Ireland until a few hundred years l8r

Bell Beaker folk would have been a terrifying lot to the final Neolithic populations, they are buried in and with their strange new instruments of War when they do die. Their bodies lay in the most sophisticated boats ever seen. They even carry bronze daggers in death.

After the initial Beaker Expansion, a similar pattern of agricultural expansion occurs, followed by another contraction in England to just the areas most productive. The “Domesday/planter effect” seems to be a constant in British agricultural history.

The Copper mines of South West Ireland keep going for 800 years from 2400, but then Copper and tin mining expands, bronze artifacts become everyday items that are discarded instead of reserved for burials. Then & begin Importing Bronze from the continent!

Ireland begins manufacturing Gold “royal” ornaments, and with the spread of the Beakers, it appears that tribal fractionalized occurs simultaneously with agri draw down, Bronze weapon manufacturing and purchasing accelerates, storied weapons given water burials with skulls.

Must Farm in England shows a trend of living on the lakes was occurring at a similar time that crannogs were beginning to be built in Ireland, it was a major find that continues to bear immense fruit. When it was burned it preserved almost all of the aspects of Bronze Age life.

We get evidence of the extent of Bronze Tools and bronze smelting and retooling when the settlement at Must Farm sank into the water.

Discoveries at Lough Gara, which rides between Sligo and Roscommon have shown that Crannogs predated their thought Iron Age Celtic origin, and this is one of many things showing a continuity of Bronze Age Civilization into the Iron Age and historical era we will see.

Another huge survival and adaptation of existing architecture comes from Ring Forts, which begin appearing during this time. These mirror the circular entrenchments around Late Neolithic Henges erected at the start of the Bronze Age. Military sites began springing up everywhere.

Question @Peter_Nimitz asked about Horse introduction to Britain and Ireland. This occurred in the Mid Bronze Age and NOT during Beaker Migration though the Beakers had many boats. When the Beaker folk finally spread further inland, they took horses and restarted Horse burial.

Irish artifact manufacturing zones and agricultural production in the Mid to Late Bronze Age spread over a larger land area than Britain. Thames, Lowland Scotland, Wessex were also zones of activity, but the largest zone is the Irish “Basin.”

Irish Gold manufacturing was the most active in Late Bronze Age and followed styles common in the Atlantic Zone, British gold had more in common with Scandinavian Bronze Age cultures.

With Atlantic sea trade, Ireland probably was more populous in LBA than Britain.

The Iron Age would see the largest upheaval in the Isles since the Beaker Invasion. Ireland’s population steeply declines, Metallurgy implodes, Atlantic trade ceases, and fields become abandoned across the Isles, it was a true Bronze Age Collapse.

When the dust finally began to settle in the Mid Iron Age, settlement patters had completely changed. Britons began building communities in East Anglia and the Midlands as well as numerous hill forts on the periphery that later became fortified towns.

But what happened in Ireland? Resettlement was much slower, Atlantic trade was not reestablished until the Historical Era, but people did slowly pull themselves back together, and founded new “royal sites” around abandoned Neolithic Megalith sites made famous by Irish History.

The Irish began making new centers of power around monuments that were then 2000 years or more old. The Hill of Tara would become the place of Irish High Kingship in historical era, while Navan Fort became the capital of Ancient Ulster. These would survive to be recorded.

As we can see with the comparison of the Gold manufacturing maps above, the sites of tool making underwent a radical shift to the Thames, Wessex, East Anglia, and Yorkshire during the Iron Age.

This has meant, unsurprisingly, that the most sophisticated forms of La Tene Celtic style Metallurgy for the most immediate Pre Historical era have come from Britain, even though this style survived longer and evolved in Ireland and Scotland.