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

• Superior document: Queen's University Belfast Irish Archaeological Monograph ; v.1
• VerfasserIn: McSparron, Cormac,
• Place / Publishing House: Oxford, UK : : Archaeopress,, [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Queen's University Belfast Irish Archaeological Monograph
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (177 pages)

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.

Table of 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
• 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)
• 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
• Introduction
• 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
• 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).
• 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
• Introduction
• Selection of sites for study
• Figure 4.1 Location map of the 206 sites in the database
• Figure 4.2 Dividing cairns / cemetery mounds into quadrants.
• Figure 4.3 Decorative Motif Elements, worked example 'Herringbone- Left, Incised Line, Incised Line Defined'
• Table 4.1 Qualitative descriptors of statistical significance used in the text and their quantitative equivalents.
• Chapter 5 Radiocarbon Dating the single burial tradition
• Introduction
• 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
• Introduction
• Relative frequency of grave types, their size and shape
• Frequency of basic grave classes.
• Burial in the landscape.