Bronze-age Ireland

Abstract

Abstract The more excavation and study that are undertaken, the more blurred become the dividing lines between one period and another. Although many scholars have discarded the old nomenclature, they have been forced to substitute other descriptive terms for them, so that in effect the divisions remain and only the names are altered. It is proposed here to retain the old divisions, employing the terms ‘bronze age’, etc., but in the knowledge that a good deal of so-called bronze-age activity actually took place before bronze was in use, just as neolithic activity took place in areas such as the shores of the River Bann, in the north of Ireland, before the implications of a neolithic way of life had fully dawned. It is proposed to deal first with some of the earliest signs of change in the neolithic way of life.