Single Burials

In eastern Ireland, the people moved away from the traditional megalithic types of tomb, which typified the Neolithic, opting instead for simple pits, or cists containing ashes or even skeletons. Hundreds of such cists have been found in all parts of Ireland, dating between 2000 and 1500BC, but their numbers are greater in Ulster and Leinster. Many of these graves have been found with pottery. Some have postulated that society became more egalitarian in this period, resulting in fewer massive burials such as Newgrange.

Wedge Tombs

In the west of Ireland, a new kind of tomb appeared, possibly built by settlers from France who may have been the first of the groups who would become known as the Celts. So-called Wedge Tombs consist of a narrowing stone chamber covered by a mound of earth. The single entrance almost invariably faces south-west. The most common megalithic feature in Ireland, they are found in western Ulster, Connaught and Munster although there is a huge concentration of 120 examples in a small area of northern county Clare. The wedge tombs in Kerry and Cork are the first megaliths to be found in those areas and this is possibly due to the presence of copper ore in that area and subsequent surge in population. Alternatively, as the Wedge Tombs are found primarily in upland areas they may have been the product of a group of pastoralists who grazed flocks on the uplands of western Ireland, before they turned into bog.

Henges

A henge is an earthen circle, probably used for ceremonial purposes. Sometimes constructed around or beside previous Neolithic megaliths, henges were constructed in Ireland in a broad period beginning around 2000BC. By far the highest concentration is in the Boyne Valley of county Meath, already home to the great passage tombs of Knowth and Newgrange. However there are other examples in counties Roscommon, Sligo, Clare, Limerick, Kildare and Waterford. There is a famous and well-preserved henge called the Giant's Ring at Ballynahatty, on the edge of Belfast in county Down. Henges were constructed by scraping soil from the centre of the circle to form a ridge all around. These henges can measure 100 to 200 metres (330 to 660 feet) across. Within the henges archaeologists have found the systematically cremated remains of animals as well as evidence of wooden and stone posts. This indicates that henges were centres for a religious cult which had its heyday in the first half of the Bronze Age. Henges are also found in Britain.

Stone Circles

Towards the end of the Bronze Age, there appeared another type of ceremonial structure, the Stone Circle. There were constructed in Ireland as well as Britain, and were constructed in large numbers, but mainly concentrated in two small areas. The first is in the Sperrin Mountains of counties Londonderry and Tyrone, while the second is is in the mountains of counties Cork and Kerry. Although both are circles of stone, they are distinctive from one another. The Ulster group are larger, but more irregular and composed of smaller stones. Frequently, a row of stones is set at a tangent to the circle. The most significant example is Beaghmore, near Cookstown in county Tyrone.  In the Munster group, the circles are made from larger stones and are associated with stone rows and standing stones. The purpose of stone circles is almost certainly ceremonial.

Everyday Life in Bronze Age Ireland

Houses

It seems that the Bronze Age Irish lived in houses that were similar to those of the Neolithic; that is, rectangular or circular houses constructed from timber beams with wattle-and-daub walls and thatched roofs made from reeds (there is evidence from Carrigillihy, county Cork that some stone houses may have been built, but this seems dubious). The circular houses would have been from 4 to 7 metres (13 to 23 feet) in diameter and supported by a central post. Some other houses may have been constructed from sods of earth placed within a wooden frame. Many houses would have had a circular wooden fence making an enclosure in front of the house. There was sometimes a circular ditch around the whole property which was both defensive and kept animals in.

Cooking

If you look carefully and in just the right places, you may see a horse-shoe shaped mound faintly discernible in an otherwise flat field. If so, there is a good chance that you are looking at a Bronze Age cooking place (fulacht fian in the Irish language). A wood-lined trough was dug in the ground and filled with water. Beside the trough, a fire was lit and stones heated in the fire. These stones were then thrown into the water. Once it was hot enough, meat could be boiled in the water. The broken, used stones were hurled off to one side and formed, over the course of some years, the distinctive horseshow mound. These fulacht fian are very common in Ireland, particularly in the south-west. Experiments have shown that the water can be brought to the boil in 30 minutes by this method, and a 4.5kg leg of mutton was successfully cooked in just under 4 hours. Geoffrey Keating, an historian writing in the 17th century, has first-hand accounts of this method of cooking being used in Ireland as recently as the 1600s AD. His account also seems to suggest that the method was also used to heat water for washing.

Language

We cannot know what language that the Bronze Age people of Ireland spoke. When the Celts arrived in Ireland at the end of the Bronze Age, they brought a central European language with them that must have been heavily influenced by the native language or languages of Ireland. It was these Celtic languages that would be the origins of the modern Irish language. While Bronze Age language would be totally incomprehensible to an Irish speaker of today, it may well be one of its distant roots.

Agriculture

Agriculture continued much as it did in the Neolithic, albeit on a larger scale. More lowland forests were cleared to make farmland which was used for grazing or for growing cerial crops. With the climatic downturn in the Bronze Age, getting a living from the land may have been harder than in the Neolithic. However, the use of metal tools probably offset any disadvantage.

War

As the population grew, the average Bronze Age farmer is likely to have traded with nearby farming communities. However, population pressures may also have sparked off wars between communities. Bronze weapons are the first that seem to have been designed with humans in mind.

Society

Most of what we know about Bronze Age society in Ireland is conjecture. However, it is supposed that the steep social hierarchy of the Neolithic became somewhat more egalitarian, judging from the reduction in extremely large-scale burials. However, the number of items of gold that have been found indicates that there must have been at least some form of an aristocracy.

The Celtic Iron Age

The Arrival of the Celts

As the Bronze Age in Ireland drew to a close, there appeared in Ireland a new cultural influence. Developing in the Alps of central Europe, the Celts spread their culture across modern-day Germany and France and into the Balkans as far as Turkey. They arrived in Britain and Ireland around 500BC and within a few hundred years, Ireland's Bronze Age culture had all but disappeared, and Celtic culture was in place across the entire island.

Celtic Europe around 400BC.

Celtic influences (for it was a culture, not an empire) had spread across much of central Europe and spread into Iberia and the British Isles. The Celts called Britain and Ireland the "Pretanic Islands" which evolved into the modern word "Britain". The word "Celt" comes from the Greeks, who called the tribes to their north the "Keltoi", but there is no evidence that the Celts ever referred to themselves by that name. To the south a small upstart republic, with its capital at Rome, was minding its own business. However it was these Romans who, a few centuries later, would supercede Celtic culture across most of Europe when they built their huge Roman Empire, which stretched from Palestine to England.

The Celts had one major advantage - they had discovered Iron. Iron had been introduced to the Celtic peoples in Europe around 1000 to 700BC, thus giving them the technological edge to spread as they did. Iron was a far superior metal to bronze, being stronger and more durable. On the other hand, it required much hotter fires to extract it from its ore and so it took a fair degree of skill to use iron. None of this is to be taken to mean that bronze fell out of use. Rather, iron simply became an alternative metal and many bronze objects have been found that were made in the Iron Age.

Whether or not the arrival of the Celts in Ireland was an actual invasion, or a more gradual assimilation, is an open question . On the one hand, the Celts - who were by no means pacifists - must have arrived in sufficiently large numbers to obliterate the existing culture in Ireland within a few hundred years. On the other hand, other better documented invasions of Ireland - such as the Viking invasions of the 7th and 8th centuries AD - failed to have the effect of changing the culture on an islandwide scale. Current academic opinion favours the theory that the Celts arrived in Ireland over the course of several centuries, beginning in the late Bronze Age with Celts of the early iron-using Hallstatt group of people, to be followed after 300BC by Celts of the La Tene cultural group which formed within the Hallstatt group.

Some have postulated that, as the Romans invaded and took control of the continental Celtic territories of Gaul [France] and Iberia [Spain and Portugal], some of the displaced Celts travelled to unconquered Celtic lands such as Britain and Ireland. The medieval "Book of Invasions" talks about Milesians and Fir Bolg arriving in Ireland. These have been identified with displaced Celts from Spain and Belgium, respectively, although this is conjecture.

Early Accounts.

The earliest pseudo-historical information that we have about Iron Age Celtic Ireland is from Carthaginian, Roman and Greek writers, who probably got their information from sailors who had been to the British Isles. There are writings from the 4th century AD by the Roman Avienus which are thought to be based on accounts from an early Greek voyage in the 6th century BC. These describe Celts in France and in the North Sea, where the British Isles are. He calls Ireland Insula Sacra (Holy Island) and its inhabitants gens hiernorum, thought to be a Latinisation of the Greek word for Ireland, Ierne. This, in all likelihood, is a modification of the word Eriu, which may be an original Celtic word for Ireland and a root of the later Irish word Eire and eventually the English word Ireland. The Greek Pytheas refers to the British Isles as the Pretanic Islands, which is derived from Priteni - definitely a Celtic word. In 52BC, the Romans were referring to Ireland as Hibernia, possibly extracted again from the Greek word Ierne.

By far the most interesting historical account of these early times is that of the Greek Ptolemy. His map of Ireland, published in Geographia, was compiled in the second century AD, but based on an account from around 100AD. No surviving originals exist, but we do have a copy dating from 1490AD.

Historians have been able to use this fascinating map to identify some of the Celtic tribes living in Ireland at the time. Many of the names cannot be identified with known tribes (particularly those in the west), and the names have been badly corrupted by being passed word-of-mouth. However, others are readily identifiable. Also on the map are the names of rivers and islands which can be identified with existing features. All this information has allowed historians to create a picture of the probable Celtic tribes living in Ireland at the time (100AD).Note that Ireland was by no means isolated. Some of the tribes straddled both sides of the Irish Sea, while others had relations in Gaul (France).

Ireland in 100AD

Roman Influences and Irish Colonies

In the last centuries BC, the rest of Celtic Europe fell to the expanding Roman Empire. The Celts of southern Britain were conquered in 43AD. Stopping short of the Picts of modern-day Scotland, the Roman emperor Hadrian built his famous wall between the Celts of the north and Roman Britain. Did the Roman armies invade Ireland? The answer is no, but we know they did consider it. During a foray into southern Scotland, the Roman General Agricola looked across the North Channel towards the Irish coast. The writer Tacitus reports that Agricola "saw that Ireland... conveniently situated for the ports of Gaul might prove a valuable acquisition" and that "I have often heard Agricola declare that a single legion, with a moderate band of auxilaries, would be enough to finish the conquest of Ireland" . However an invasion never took place - not because the Irish would be too hard to defeat, but simply because the Romans decided it wouldn't be worth the effort.

However, Ireland did come under heavy Roman influence, even if not under its rule. In the first and second centuries AD, there is evidence that there was sporadic trading between the Irish and the Romans of Britain. Tacitus, writing in the first century AD, says of Ireland "the interior parts are little known, but through commerical intercourse and the merchants there is better knowledge of the harbours and approaches". Evidence of a Roman trading post has been found near Dublin. However, it was not until the fourth and fifth centuries AD that there is evidence of prolonged Roman influences in Ireland. Roman coins and other implements have been found in Ireland. There is evidence that the language spoken by the Eoganacht of Munster, who arrived at the end of the Iron Age, had been heavily influenced by Latin. Finally, it is certain that Ogham, the first written scripts in the Irish language, was based on the Latin alphabet (see language, below).

Towards the end of the pre-Christian period, as the Roman Empire and its colony in Britain declined, the Irish took advantage and began raiding western Britain. Picts from Scotland and Saxons from Germany raided other parts of the colony. As their raids got ever more successful, the Irish began to colonise western Britain. The Erainn of Munster settled in Cornwall, the Laigin of Leinster settled in south Wales while the Deisi of south-east Ireland settled in north Wales. Cormac of Cashel (writing much later, in 908AD) records that "The power of the Irish over the Britons was great, and they had divided Britain between them into estates... and the Irish lived as much east of the sea as they did in Ireland" . These colonies were all defeated by the Britons within the next century or so, although Irish kings seemed to be still ruling in south Wales as late as the tenth century. The map on the left shows these colonies.

But by far the most successful colony was that of the Dal Riata in western Scotland. Their colony thrived and, in fact, it seems that most or all Dal Riatans ultimately left northern Ireland for the new colony. Probably founding the colony around 400-500AD, Dal Riata was well established by 563AD and in the ninth century it took control of Pictland, to the east, and founding the united kingdom of Scotland.