Head for the Hills

Nucleated Hilltop Settlement in the Irish Bronze Age

Dados Bibliográficos

ID7324976
AutoresJames O''Driscoll (0000-0001-8806-6394, University of Aberdeen, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume36
Fascículo1
Páginas1-47
Data de publicação2023-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of World Prehistory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0892-7537 • E-ISSN: 1573-7802
EditoraSpringer Nature (PUBLISHER • SG)
DOI10.1007/s10963-023-09172-8
OpenAlexW4365453349
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas73

In Bronze Age Ireland, the settlement record almost exclusively comprises individual, isolated farmsteads dotted throughout the island (Ginn in Emania, 21 : 47–58, 2013; Ginn, Mapping society: Settlement structures in Later Bronze Age Ireland , Archaeopress, 2016). Recent studies have shown that these are incredibly homogeneous, with the nearly 700 excavated examples showing no signs of significant variation in terms of size or density and little in the way of high-status material culture. This conflicts with other evidence from this period, which points to an elite culture inferred from extensive long-distance trading, the manufacture of high-status goods and the construction of massive communal monuments such as hillforts. The latter comprise some of Europe’s largest and most impressive monuments and are often recognised as regional centres of power and authority. Until recently, these monuments have received little attention in Ireland and have rarely been integrated into the broader study of Irish Bronze Age settlement patterns. Indeed, it is at hillforts, which might be regarded as the permanent settlement of an elite and a central space for a disparate community, that we should find larger structures and more nuanced evidence for settlement hierarchies if they exist. This paper aims to collate the settlement evidence within Irish hillforts and other unenclosed upland settlements, integrating this within the broader narrative of the contemporary settlement pattern. It is argued that a clear hierarchy of settlement is apparent at some of the densely settled Irish hillforts, and that these formed central spaces for a disparate community where architecture formed the main arena for the display of status and group identity

Archaeology · Bronze Age · Elite · Ethnology · Geography · Human settlement · Irish · Political science · Politics · Settlement (finance · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · History · Law · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies