Ireland is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by seas that link it to a wider world. From earliest times, its peoples have lived beside its shorelines, bays and estuaries, navigating seaways and gathering diverse resources. Since Ireland's first peoples arrived - Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who came by boat about 10,000 years ago - the sea has been of enormous cultural, economic and ideological significance in its long story. In this book, two of Ireland's leading maritime archaeologists explore rich and intriguing evidence for its past maritime resources and traditions and how these changed through prehistory, the Middle Ages and up until the present day. Using archaeological discoveries, linked with historical and environmental evidence, they reveal the often overlooked cultural heritage of Ireland's coastal landscapes in their European and Atlantic contexts. This book will appeal to anyone interested in Ireland's cultural, environmental and maritime inheritance - and to anyone who has walked along this island's shoreline and wondered about its peoples and its past.
Author(s): Aidan O'Sullivan, Colin Breen
Publisher: Tempus Publishing
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 272
City: Stroud
List of illustrations 6
Preface 9
1. Introduction 11
2. Mesolithic hunter-gatherers: life and death by the seashore (8000-4000 BC) 29
3. Neolithic farmers, landscapes and seascapes, 4000-2500 BC 59
4. The isles of the north: Bronze Age and Iron Age maritime traditions in Ireland 79
5. Saints, ships and seaways: early medieval coastal landscapes and traditions (AD 400-1200) 109
6. Gaelic lordships, Anglo-Norman merchants and Late medieval mariners (AD 1100-1550) 159
7. Plantation, industrialisation and the modern world (AD 1550-1945) 199
Conclusions: towards a maritime archaeology of Ireland 241
Index 253
