| Iron Age
Ireland's Iron Age is
usually said to run from the end of the Bronze Age (around 500 B.C.)
and continues until around 500 A.D. The overlap from Later Bronze
Age to Early Iron Age reflects how society changed slowly and did
not make a great leap of technology and culture from one period into
another. Similarly, the end of the Iron Age extends into the
Early Christian period in Ireland, and while great changes
were taking place at that time, the technology used in farming and
blacksmithing, cart making, etc. would have continued unchanged up
to relatively modern times.
Ireland's Iron Age has it's
origins in Europe where a culture known as the Halstatt was
flourishing 800 B.C. for a couple of centuries.
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| Bronze Age Ritual |
| Stone Circles, Stone Rows, and Standing Stones
are quite evocative in the Irish landscape and still cause
people to pause and contemplate their raison d'etre and to
imagine the rituals which took place at, or in them and to try
to imagine the people who performed such ritual. Were
they for marriage?... a baptism of some sort?... funeral
rites?... sacrifice? Nothing else in Irish archaeology
has this power of connecting the peoples of the past with the
people of the present. To stand in the centre of a
Bronze Age stone circle on the side of a windswept hill can be
a moving experience. |
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Drombeg Stone
Circle, Co. Cork
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| Stone Circles There are two distinct
types of stone circle in Ireland. In West Cork - Kerry
the circles are made up of uneven numbers of stones from five
to seventeen and these contain an area of between 8 feet
and fifty feet. The entrance faces the north-east and a stone
opposite the entrance is called the axial stone. Some of the
circles have a boulder burial within them. Boulder
burials are very simple in plan and are just what they
describe, a burial, usually cremated, with a large boulder
marking the spot.
In Fermanagh, Tyrone and Derry a group of stone circles are
classified as the Mid-Ulster Group. There are some
differences between this group and the Cork Kerry group.
These differences occur in the spasing between the stones, the
size of the stones and the number of stones. Tharea
within the Ulster group is usually smaller that that of there
southern counterparts.
The largest stone circles in Ireland is that of
Grange at Lough Gur in County Limerick. This is very
accessible and an effort should be made to get to it if you
have an interest in how our Bronze Age ancestors conducted
their daily lifes. It
measures 150 feet in diameter and is enclosed by 113 standing
stones. The stones are surrounded by and supported by a
forty foot wide bank The largest stone is over 13 feet
high and is estimated to weigh 40 tons. It was built over 4000
years ago.
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Grange Stone Circle
at Lough Gur. (Photo by Jon Sullivan) |
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