Stone Age

THE STONE AGE / MEGALITHIC PERIOD

PRE – CHRISTIAN IRELAND

7000BC – 2000BC

1. The Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) 1.8 million years ago to 10000 B.C.

Paleo come from the Greek word Palaois which means old. Lithic comes from Lithos which means stone 

2. The Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) 10000 B.C. to 4000 B.C.  Meso = middle
3. Neolithic (New Stone Age) from 4000 B.C to 2400 B.C Neos = new

STONE AGE: most valuable material to the people – tools, hunting, digging, weapons

Nomadic people of the time did not settle in one place and were hunter gathers. During the Neolithic Era they cleared forests to plant crops and domesticated animals. There is evidence to suggest that these early people were highly organised and complex social group. This can be seen from house plans, stone tools, pottery fragments and their stone tombs.

                        

         

Stone Age Structures

Built three types of structures/tombs for their dead

Dolmens

   

The term Dolmen means Stone Table which comes from the Celtic language Breton  word dual (table) and maen (stone).

Three to seven large upright standing stones supporting one or two large capstones that slope downwards and the back. Used to commemorate the dead and acted as centres from various ceremonies.

Dolmens make up the majority of the megalithic monuments in Ireland and the settlers who built them left a permanent mark on the physical landscape.

These structures were the first attempt to organise shape in the landscape around them.

 

     

Court Cairns 

A mound, with an oval – shaped entrance courtyard framed by stones

Court cairns are a group of monuments constructed for some kind of ritual or social gatherings.

There are just over 400 of them in Ireland, and they are almost all found north of a line between Galway Bay and Dublin, i.e. in the northern half of the country.

Archaeology attempts to classify monuments by size, style and type, but courts manage to defy easy categorisation.

As the name suggests, court cairns have a courtyard or open area, generally bounded by orthostats (standing stones) or dry stone walling. Opening from the court is a chamber or artificial cave, usually roofed with corbels or overlapping stones, though very few roofed examples survive.

The chambers are divided into two, three or four compartments.

 

Passage Graves

 A Passage Tomb is a mound with a long underground passage and circular chamber.

They consist of one narrow passage made of large stones and one or multiple burial chambers covered in earth or stone.

The building of passage tombs was normally carried out with megaliths (A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. and smaller stones) they usually date from the Neolithic Age.

Those with more than one chamber may have multiple sub-chambers leading off from the main burial chamber. One common layout, the cruciform passage grave, is cross-shaped. Sometimes passage tombs are covered with a cairn (is a man-made pile (or stack) of stones), especially those dating from later times.