Ceide Fields?

CarlosHarpic

A few stones in a bog is the Stonehenge of the West?

I can't understand how this very vague and speculative site gets the funding and attention it does.

slowburner

CarlosHarpic wrote: »

A few stones in a bog is the Stonehenge of the West?

I can't understand how this very vague and speculative site gets the funding and attention it does.

Think of it this way: we want to understand what life was like in the past. So we examine physical remains, and we try to hear what they tell us.
Dying is something that we only do once in our lives. Studying how people celebrated or remembered the dead provides a limited insight into the lives of the populus.
Providing food is something we do throughout our lives. So if we are trying to understand how people lived in the past - then it makes sense to study how those people fed themselves and their families. It makes sense to study the common activities rather than the exceptional ones.
Studying monuments like Stonehenge is fascinating, but it is only a tiny portion of the lives of past people. Much better and much more informative to study the mundane things about past people. The everyday things tell us so much more than the exceptional things.
It's a bit like making the assumption that religious orders represent all of the people.

As to the Cèide fields themselves: their importance is that they are physical evidence of the very activity that characterises the Early Neolithic period in Ireland. This is the transition from a hunter gatherer lifestyle, to an agricultural lifestyle.
The core difference is the enclosure of land. That is what those 'few stones in a bog...' do. They represent one of the most significant moments in prehistoric Ireland. Perhaps in prehistoric Europe.

CarlosHarpic

slowburner wrote: »

Think of it this way: we want to understand what life was like in the past. So we examine physical remains, and we try to hear what they tell us.
Dying is something that we only do once in our lives. Studying how people celebrated or remembered the dead provides a limited insight into the lives of the populus.
Providing food is something we do throughout our lives. So if we are trying to understand how people lived in the past - then it makes sense to study how those people fed themselves and their families. It makes sense to study the common activities rather than the exceptional ones.
Studying monuments like Stonehenge is fascinating, but it is only a tiny portion of the lives of past people. Much better and much more informative to study the mundane things about past people. The everyday things tell us so much more than the exceptional things.
It's a bit like making the assumption that religious orders represent all of the people.

As to the Cèide fields themselves: their importance is that they are physical evidence of the very activity that characterises the Early Neolithic period in Ireland. This is the transition from a hunter gatherer lifestyle, to an agricultural lifestyle.
The core difference is the enclosure of land. That is what those 'few stones in a bog...' do. They represent one of the most significant moments in prehistoric Ireland. Perhaps in prehistoric Europe.

I understand all this and thanks for your excellent response. But Ceide Fields is likely a fairy tale made up by a well connected Fianna Fail type and many archeologists have expressed serious doubts about the veracity of the site.

Having been there myself, even if it is not the Jebadiha Springfield grave of Irish antiquities, it is an incredibly mundane site to be afforded vast funding, hype and attention. I found it very hard to accept whatvi saw as being Neolithic. However, your are bombarded with this at the centre so you blindly accept it.

I not convinced.

robp

CarlosHarpic wrote: »

I understand all this and thanks for your excellent response. But Ceide Fields is likely a fairy tale made up by a well connected Fianna Fail type and many archeologists have expressed serious doubts about the veracity of the site.

Having been there myself, even if it is not the Jebadiha Springfield grave of Irish antiquities, it is an incredibly mundane site to be afforded vast funding, hype and attention. I found it very hard to accept whatvi saw as being Neolithic. However, your are bombarded with this at the centre so you blindly accept it.

I not convinced.

I am not sure it has received vast funding. It has a visitor centre but so do many unspectacular places across Ireland. While one archaeologist argue that the site may be younger then Neolithic, I haven't heard any arguments that the site doesn't represent buried prehistoric fields.

I convinced.

Josip007

Cèide fields themselves: their importance is that they are physical evidence of the very activity that characterizes the Early Neolithic period in Ireland. This is the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, to an agricultural lifestyle. 
The core difference is the enclosure of land. That is what those 'few stones in a bog...' do. They represent one of the most significant moments in prehistoric Ireland. Perhaps in prehistoric Europe.

topper75

Isn't there layering in the peat that allows us to date it?

It isn't fake - you can't 'plant' rows of stones in the turf six feet down!.

AFAIK - they demonstrate on site how they 'follow' the wall along by plunging iron bars. Nature doesn't do trellis patterns with glacial erratics.

It is the oldest field system we have discovered in all of Europe. What is surprising is that this should be on the western extremity.