1Good morning everyone.
2Last week we were looking at the hunter-gatherers in Ireland,
3across the Irish Sea from England.
4Today, we're going to move on to the period between 4 and 6000 years ago,
5known as the Neolithic period,
6which is when a total farming economy was introduced in Ireland.
7Now, there are several hypotheses about the origins of the first Neolithic settlers in Ireland,
8but most of these contain problems.
9For instance, there are considerable archaeological difficulties about the theory that they came from England.
10The evidence doesn't really add up.
11But there are even greater practical problems about the theory that they came directly from continental Europe.
12For one thing, it's not clear just how sufficient numbers of men and women could have been transported to Ireland
13to establish a viable population.
14As you know, the hunter-gatherer economy which existed beforehand was based on small scattered groups.
15The farming economy would almost certainly have required much larger communities
16to do all the work needed to plant and tend sufficient crops to sustain them through the year.
17The early farmers kept various animals, including cattle and sheep.
18There's also evidence of pigs,
19but it is possible that these could have been descended from the native wild species.
20Now, we know from modern farming that if the level of breeding stock falls below about 300 females,
21the future of the species locally is at risk.
22So we must assume that from the beginnings of Neolithic farming,
23the number of breeding sheep would have considerably exceeded 300,
24and the national cattle herd must have been of a similar size.
25The question is how these were brought to the area and where they came from.
26It's usually suggested that the Neolithic settlers used skin-covered boats to transport livestock.
27But this method would have severely restricted the range of the colonising fleets.
28The sheer volume of animal transport necessary
29means it's unlikely that this livestock could have been brought from anywhere further than England.
30What about crops?
31Well, two main cereal crops were introduced to Ireland during this time:
32wheat and barley, both in several varieties.
33The main evidence for their presence consists of impressions on pottery,
34where a cereal grain accidentally became embedded in the surface of a pot before it was fired.
35The grain itself was destroyed by the firing,
36but it left an impression on the pot
37which could be studied and identified by botanists.
38Let's turn our attention now to the farming technology available at that time.
39Before the cereal crops could be planted,
40it would have been necessary to clear the forest and to break the ground by ploughing.
41The stone blade of a plough has been discovered during excavation in County Mayo in western Ireland.
42The body of the plough would have been of wood
43and could have been drawn by people,
44but it's also likely that cattle were used.
45Now, the cultivation of crops and the husbandry of livestock brought about changes in people's lifestyle
46such as the type of shelters they made.
47For one thing, instead of moving from place to place
48they needed permanent dwellings.
49The stone axes used to chop down trees to make these dwellings
50were far superior to any that the Stone Age hunter-gatherers used.
51To make the axes, sources of suitable stone had to be found and systematically exploited.
52These so-called 'axe factories' were really quarries rather than factories,
53as the manufacture of the axes wasn't regularly performed on the quarry site.
54However, after the axe had been chipped into shape,
55they needed water and sand for grinding and polishing,
56so a high mountainside wouldn't have been an appropriate place for this.
57So this final stage of the manufacture must have been carried out close to water
58and sure enough, there's ample evidence of this at coastal sites.
59Now it's clear that these Neolithic axes were transported all over Ireland,
60as well as to Scotland and the south of England.
61It's not really surprising that axes from 'axe factories' in England have also been found in Ireland.
62At the very least, this indicates that there was a link between the two islands during that period.
63One of the most useful innovations of the colonisers was pottery making,
64which was quite unknown to Irish hunter-gatherers.
65The pottery was probably made by shaping clay into a ball with the hand,
66and then hollowing it until the walls were the right thickness.
67After firing, the outside was often polished.
68This would have helped the pots to retain water, as they weren't glazed.
69Now we know that the clay used usually came from local sources,
70which suggests that manufacture was on a fairly small scale,
71even though thousands of fragments are usually found at Neolithic sites.
72In the course of time decoration began to appear.
73At first this looked like a series of stitches and was just around the tops of the pots.
74This could have been an imitation of earlier vessels which were made of leather sewn onto wood.
75Then eventually pots with decoration...