Ireland’s First Settlers tells the story of the archaeology and history of the first continuous phase of Ireland’s human settlement. It combines centuries of search and speculation about human antiquity in Ireland with a review of what is known today about the Irish Mesolithic. This is, in part, provided in the context of the author’s 50 years of personal experience searching to make sense of what initially appeared to be little more than a collection of beach rolled and battered flint tools. The story is embedded in how the island of Ireland, its position, distinct landscape and ecology impacted on when and how Ireland was colonized. It also explores how these first settlers evolved their technologies and lifeways to suit the narrow range of abundant resources that were available. The volume concludes with discussions on how the landscape should be searched for the often ephemeral traces of these early settlers and how sites should be excavated. It asks what we really know about the thoughts and life of the people themselves and what happened to them as farming began to be introduced.

Explores the Irish Mesolithic - the period after the end of the last Ice Age when Ireland was home to hunter-gatherer communities, mostly from about 10,000-6,000 years ago. At this time, Ireland was an island world, with striking similarities and differences to its European neighbours - not least in terms of the terrestrial ecology created by its island status. To understand the communities of hunter-gatherers who lived there, it is essential that we consider the connections established between people and the other beings and materials with which they shared the world and through which they grew into it. Understanding the Mesolithic means paying attention to the animals, plants, spirits and things with which hunting and gathering groups formed kinship relationships and in collaboration with which they experienced life. The book closes with a reflection on hunting and gathering in Ireland today. The overriding aim of the book is to provide a point of entry into the lives of the Irish Mesolithic, to show the different ways in which people have lived on this island, and to show how we might narrate those lives.

The general perception of the archaeology of the Mesolithic in Britain and Ireland is that the period is somewhat impoverished. Often assumed to have an exceptionally limited range of evidence, the period is also perceived as a theoretical backwater, devoid of the vibrant, engaging narratives that have transformed other branches of prehistoric archaeology over the last 20 years. However, new approaches, producing a distinctive 'Mesolithic' archaeology, are beginning to supersede the traditional accounts and demonstrate that such assumptions about the Mesolithic are wholly misplaced. This volume, aimed at a broader archaeological readership, introduces this new generation of researchers and offers an urgently needed teaching resource for students who want a deeper understanding of the period. The book provides up-to-date information on a variety of important topics: technology, gender, subsistence, analogy, ritual, landscape and death. Additionally, a range of important Mesolithic sites are discussed throughout the text, with new interpretations and theories being explored. The book's combination of high-quality academic research and comprehensive reading lists ensure that it will be of value to second or final-year students studying a module on the Mesolithic, and essential reading for post-graduate students.

The term 'Mesolithic' was born in the nineteenth century from the need to label a 'hiatus' period and was not generally accepted as a useful term by many scholars until around fifty years later. It has been championed by some, but still concerns others because of the difficulty of defining what it represents. This volume highlights the enthusiasm for Mesolithic studies in the 21st century and the feeling that there is a need to explore the many facets of Mesolithic lifeways. Approaches are now moving away from the traditional Mesolithic canon that seems to have been based on a particular set of biological and/or ecological perspectives and are now looking for new directions and new theoretical arenas which can only help stimulate Mesolithic debate. The papers in this volume take a range of approaches to a period that has largely been devoid of explicit theoretical discussion. They deconstruct and explore a broad variety of subjects, including mobility, complexity, seasonality, death & burial, gender & sexuality, social relations, music, human agency, ethnoarchaeology and emotion.

"This volume presents the outcome of two meetings: the international workshop on Warfare in Bronze Age Europe: manufacture and use of weaponry, an interdisciplinary research on technology and utilisation of archaeological finds, held in Vienna ... from the 30th October to 1st November 2009 and the session New approaches on studying weaponry of the European bronze age held at the 15th annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) in Riva del Garda, Italy, on the 17th September 2009"--Pref.