Burials and society in late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Ireland / Cormac McSparron.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McSparron, Cormac, author.

Series:

Queen's University Belfast Irish Archaeological Monograph

Queen's University Belfast Irish Archaeological Monograph ; v.1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Copper age.

Burial--Ireland.

Burial.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (177 pages)

Place of Publication:

Oxford, UK : Archaeopress, [2021]

Summary:

This book describes and analyses the increasing complexity of later Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age burial in Ireland, using burial complexity as a proxy for increasing social complexity, and as a tool for examining social structure.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright page

Contents Page

List of Figures

List of Tables

Foreword and Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Introduction

Aims and Objectives

Figure 1.1 Photo of a cist containing an inhumation and accompanied by a tripartite bowl from Church Bay, Rathlin, Co. Antrim (after Sloan 2008)

Figure 1.2 Photo of an inverted vase urn within a cist from Knockroe, Co. Tyrone (Williams and Wilkinson 1988)

Why study the social structure of the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age by an analysis of the single burial tradition?

Definitions

Social structure

The Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age

The single burial tradition

The structure of the book

Anthropological approaches to the study of death and funerary ritual

The sociologists

Introduction

Chapter 2 Theoretical Approaches to the study of Death, Funerary Rituals and Social Structure

The functionalists

Structuralism

Modern anthropological studies of death ritual

Archaeological approaches to the study of death and funerary ritual

The 'New Archaeology' and its contribution to the study of death and funerary ritual

Critics of the 'New Archaeology' and their approach to the study of death and funerary ritual

The new synthesis

Modern approaches to the study of social structure

Ranked societies

Un-ranked or egalitarian societies

Stratified societies

Figure 2.1 Diagrammatic summary of the interrelationships of degree of ranking, access to the economic base and social evolutionary typology.

Conclusions.

Figure 2.1 Diagrammatic summary of the interrelationships of degree of ranking, access to the economic base and social evolutionary typology.

Chapter 3 Ireland in the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age

The archaeology of the Irish Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age

The Late Chalcolithic / Early Bronze Age environment

Into the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age

Ireland at the cusp of the Chalcolithic

Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age settlement

Non-funerary rituals of the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age in Ireland

Megalithic burial rituals of the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age in Ireland

Figure 3.1 Cloghnagalla, Co. Derry / Londonderry wedge tomb after Herring (1940).

Wedge tombs and Atlantic Europe

Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age metallurgy in Ireland

Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age metalwork

Daggers

Halberds

Gold in Early Bronze Age Ireland

Is there continuity between Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic Ireland?

Lunulae

Provenance of Irish gold

The transition from the Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age

Previous research on the Early Bronze Age single burial tradition of Ireland

Figure 3.2 Bowl and Vase forms

a. simple bowl from Tonyglaskan (Hurl and Murphy 2004), b. bipartite bowl from Straid (Brannon and Williams 1990), c. Necked bipartite bowl from Dungate (Waterman and Brennan 1977), d. tripartite bowl, e. ribbed bowl from

Figure 3.3 Examples of vase and encrusted urns, a. vase urn from Drumanakeel (Williams and Wilkinson 1985) and b. encrusted urn from Drumanakeel (ibid).

Figure 3.4 Examples of a cordoned urn a. from Kilcroagh (Williams 1992) and collared urn b. from Lisnagat, (Jope and Jope 1952).

Summary

Figure 3.1 Cloghnagalla, Co. Derry / Londonderry wedge tomb after Herring (1940).

Table 3.1 Waddell's classification of Irish Daggers

Chapter 4 Methodology

Coding and recording the data in a database

Figure 4.1 Location map of the 206 sites in the database

The database fields

Figure 4.2 Dividing cairns / cemetery mounds into quadrants.

Figure 4.3 Decorative Motif Elements, worked example 'Herringbone- Left, Incised Line, Incised Line Defined'

Assessing ranking by an examination of burial ritual

Selection of sites for study

Table 4.1 Qualitative descriptors of statistical significance used in the text and their quantitative equivalents.

Chapter 5 Radiocarbon Dating the single burial tradition

Methodology

Constructing models in OxCal 4.2

Criteria for excluding dates from the radiocarbon analysis.

Other dates excluded from the analysis

Analysis of the radiocarbon dates from the Late Chalcolithic / Early Bronze Age single burial tradition

Dating single burial tradition by province

Dating the single burial tradition across Ireland

Dating single burial tradition funerary pottery.

Dating aspects of pottery decoration

Dating techniques of decoration

Defined / undefined decoration

The chronology of funerary ritual and grave attributes

Dating cist and polygonal cist burials

Dating inhumation and cremation

Dating pits

Examining cist dates by province

Dating graves which contain no pottery, pot-less cists and Pits

Conclusions

Phasing the Irish single burial tradition

Figure 5.1 A Diagram of the radiocarbon date ranges of the main attributes of the Late Chalcolithic / Early Bronze Age single burial tradition. Light grey is the 95.4% Start/ End Range, mid grey the 68.2% Start / End Range, black the area within the Start

Table 5.1 Radiocarbon dates excluded from aspects of the analysis

Table 5.3 Oxcal 4.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2015) calibrated ranges (Reimer et al. 2013) for the single burial tradition, by province

Table 5.2 OxCal 4.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2015) calibrated ranges (Reimer et al. 2013) for the Start and End of the single burial tradition

Table 5.4 Brindley's PCDR and FCDR s (Brindley 2007)

Table 5.5 OxCal 4.2(Bronk Ramsey 2015) calibrated ranges (Reimer et al. 2013) for the Start and End dates of single burial tradition funerary vessels at 95.4% and 68.2%

Table 5.6 OxCal 4.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2015) calibrated ranges(Reimer et al. 2013) for the start and end dates of decorative techniques from single burial tradition funerary vessels at 95.4% and 68.2%, using dating samples directly associated with the vessels.

Figure 5.2 OxCal 4.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2015) multiplot of the calibrated ranges (Reimer et al. 2013) of dates associated with vessels displaying Defined Decorative Motifs. Red line shows a best fit line through the calibrated ranges.

Table 5.7 OxCal 4.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2015) calibrated ranges (Reimer et al. 2013) for the Start and End dates of Defined / Undefined decoration from single burial tradition funerary vessels at 95.4% and 68.2%, using dating samples directly associated with th

Figure 5.3 OxCal 4.2(Bronk Ramsey 2015) multiplot of the calibrated ranges (Reimer et al. 2013) of dates associated with cist burials. Red line shows a best fit line through the calibrated ranges.

Table 5.8 OxCal 4.2(Bronk Ramsey 2015) calibrated ranges (Reimer et al. 2013) for the start and end dates of cists and pits at 95.4% and 68.2%, using dating samples directly associated with the vessels.

Table 5.9 OxCal 4.2(Bronk Ramsey 2015) calibrated ranges (Reimer et al. 2013) for the start and end dates of cists by province at 95.4% and 68.2%, using dating samples directly associated with the vessels.

Figure 5.4 OxCal 4.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2015) multiplot of the calibrated ranges (Reimer et al. 2013) of dates associated with inhumation burials. Red line shows a best fit line through the calibrated range

Table 5.10 OxCal 4.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2015) date ranges for the start and end of single burial tradition inhumation and cremation

Figure 5.5 OxCal 4.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2015) multiplot of the calibrated ranges (Reimer et al. 2013) of dates associated with cremation burials.

Table 5.11 OxCal 4.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2015) date ranges for the start and end of pot-less burials

Figure 5.6 Phasing scheme of the single burial tradition, with Needham's (1996) scheme for the British Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age and O'Brien's Irish Chalcolithic scheme.

Figure 5.7 Oxcal 4.2 multiplot showing the radiocarbon dates of all vessels with reliable dates in the data set.

Chapter 6 Analysis

Relative frequency of grave types, their size and shape

Frequency of basic grave classes.

Burial in the landscape.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781789696325

1789696321

OCLC:

1257889356