The invasion hypothesis in Irish prehistory

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3348232
AutoresJohn Waddell (autor de correspondencia)
Año1978
Volumen52
Número205
Páginas121-128
Fecha de publicación1978-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAntiquity (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0003-598X • E-ISSN: 1745-1744
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0003598x00071945
OpenAlexW2276836759
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas4

A glance at the archaeological literature of the last dozen years demonstrates all too clearly that the popularity of the 'invasion hypothesis' in Irish archaeology is quite undiminished. An almost incessant stream of immigrants appears to have tramped ashore from the Mesolithic period to the Iron Age. Even reckoning those pre-eminent invaders, the Beaker Folk, as merely a single influx, over a dozen significant prehistoric population movements are claimed by a variety of writers. The general picture presented suggests that Ireland throughout much of her prehistory was, if not an archaeological Ellis Island, at least a desirable landfall for the land-hungry, the dispossessed and the adventurous of most of the rest of Western Europe. Major changes and innovations in the archaeological record-in monument or artifact typemay conceivably be the result of either independent invention, or diffusion or of a combination of the two. The occurrence of megalithic tombs in very different cultural and chronological contexts in Western Europe, India and Japan, for example, is an instance of independent invention

Ancient history · Archaeological record · Archaeology · Artifact (error) · Beaker · Dozen · Ethnology · Geography · Irish · Linguistics · Megalith · Mesolithic · Population · Prehistory · Archaeological Research and Protection · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Demography · History · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology