Do we have a definitive date for the start of the Neolithic?

markesmith

I see dates from 4600 BC to 3300 BC thrown around for the start of the Neolithic in Ireland. Do we have a firm date that we have settled on? HeritageCouncil.ie is giving 4600 BC as a date - how accurate is that?

endacl

Bonedigger wrote: »

Tomb 3 at Carrowmore was excavated by a Swedish team in 1979 and returned a radiocarbon date of 4600 B.C.

July 16th, 4600 B.C., to be precise. Shortly after teatime.

slowburner

markesmith wrote: »

I see dates from 4600 BC to 3300 BC thrown around for the start of the Neolithic in Ireland. Do we have a firm date that we have settled on? HeritageCouncil.ie is giving 4600 BC as a date - how accurate is that?

There are several factors to be considered in regard to a date for the beginning of the Irish Neolithic. Regional variation, whether or not it was a gradual or abrupt transition or indeed how to define the emergence of the Neolithic. Is the Neolithic characterised by the domestication of animals, the emergence of a new tradition of monument construction, a pastoral lifestyle or all of these characteristics combined?
The discovery of a domesticated cattle bone at the Mesolithic site at Ferriter's Cove for example, raises questions about when domestication began. Or was the Mesolithic landscape devoid of monuments? Current thinking is that monuments in the Mesolithic were present but, because they were probably constructed from timber, their survival is problematic. Many authorities on the period are leaning towards the idea that at least some Neolithic monuments were constructed on sites that were significant in the Mesolithic.
Then there is the fact that new evidence and new dating technologies are providing new insights and new challenges to previous views. The sheer volume of material unearthed during the boom years and infrastructural excavations is under constant review, and is constantly changing the parameters of our knowledge of the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition.
The transition is not something that happened overnight (or even between meals) and for that reason alone, few would be happy to give an absolute date.
That said, a date of around 4300 BC seems to be reasonably acceptable - for the time being.

endacl

Bonedigger wrote: »

Nothing better to do, no?!!

Than offer a comment? No. Not at that moment. Like any historical period, phasing from what came before, a definite start date is impossible to define. We can only identify a 'before' and a period when established'. Did the age of rock and roll begin when Bill Haley wrote Rock Around the Clock? When he recorded it? When it became a hit? When it influenced others? When did the period begin? Exactly?

When did the Stone Age end? There are still communities in parts if the world who routinely use stone tools. Are we still in the Stone Age? Lines aren't clear cut. Lighten up.

markesmith

4600 BC seems awfully early for the Carrowmore tomb - would farming have even reached the British Isles by then?

Cianmcliam

There's been a recent re-evaluation of the Carrowmore dates, the very old dates are from charcoal which could have been old wood when it was burned or could have been in the ground for a long time before the chambers were built. Stefan Bergh and Robert Hensey have dated the tombs to around 3,740BC from antler pins found in the burial deposits.

People like Colin Richards and Alison Sheridan however think the burial finds that were dated were secondary deposits so the monuments were probably built sometime between the very early dates that Burenhult published and the later (but still early) dates from the bone and antler pins in the burials.

Poulnabrone Dolmen produced some early dates around 3,800 BC and a similar date was recently determined at Baltinglass.

I reckon then you are looking at sometime between 4,300 as an earliest and 3,900BC as a latest date.

slowburner

This is an important subject, and deserves a slightly more detailed discussion.

One of the primary reasons for not giving absolute dates for the beginnings of the Irish Neolithic is the nature of the material from which the dates were obtained.
The earliest reliable date we have (so far) is 4270 cal BC from Poulnabrone, but to complicate matters, the bones which provided that date are believed to have been brought from elsewhere (Beckett & Robb 2006, 62-3 and Cooney et al. 2011, 604-5).
Then there is a gap of some 500 + years before the next reliable date of 3715 cal BC.
So what can we make of this - is a relatively isolated date of 4270 cal BC sufficient to say that this is the beginning of the Neolithic in Ireland, or should we treat this with a degree of caution because we know that the bones which provided this date might not have come from a strictly Neolithic context?
And what is a Neolithic context?
The earliest bones pre-date the proliferation of megalithic tombs across the Irish landscape by the same number of years as the second burial phase at Poulabrone.
In other words, there is a lengthy period where Neolithic burial practices appear to have been taking place (the early bones were defleshed and partially cremated), but without the interment of human remains in megalithic monuments.
Clearly, the people who kept these bones for many, many generations did not see themselves as divorced from an earlier tradition - quite the reverse, they must have known who these people were (ancestors or important people) and respected them enough to keep their memory alive. Maintaining and re-burying these bones is a statement of continuity and tradition.
There are fragmentary dates for the transitional period or the period preceding the emergence of the rectilinear Neolithic house (3720 cal BC) and the appearance of the megalithic tomb building tradition: material from the causewayed enclosure at Magheraboy for example, has yielded dates of 4065 - 3945 cal BC, Clowanstown has given dates of 3800 - 3700 cal BC, and evidence for cereal production has been identified from 3750 cal BC (McClatchie et al, 2012).
Which brings us back to the original question of a 'firm' starting date for the Irish Neolithic. There probably is no firm date as of now, and there may well never be a date set in stone. However, if we were to characterise the beginnings of the Irish Neolithic as necessairly incorporating the emergence of the Neolithic house and the emergence of megalithic tombs, then this would put the Poulnabrone evidence on hold for the time being, and we might settle on a starting point of around 3800 BC.



Beckett, J., and Robb, J. 2006. Neolithic burial taphonomy, ritual, and interpretation in Britain and Ireland: a review. In Gowland, R. and Knusel, C. (eds.), The Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains. 57-80. Oxford. Oxbow.

Cooney, G., Bayliss, A., Healy, F., Whittle, A., Danaher, E., Cagney, C., Mallory, J., Smyth, J., Kador, T. and O’Sullivan, M. 2011.Whittle, A., Healy, F. and Bayliss, A. eds. Gathering time: dating the early Neolithic enclosures of southern Britain and Ireland: 562-669. Oxford: Oxbow.

Lynch, A. 1988. Poulnabrone: a stone in time. Archaeology Ireland 5:105-107.

Lynch, A. and Ó Donnabháin, B. 1994 Poulnabrone, Co. Clare. The Other Clare 18: 5-7.

McClatchie, M., Bogaard, A., Colledge, S., Whitehouse, N.J., Schulting, R.J., Barratt, P., and McLaughlin, R. 2012. Neolithic farming in north-western Europe: archaeobotanical evidence from Ireland. Journal of Archaeological Science.