Climate and Society in Ireland is a collection of essays, commissioned by the Royal Irish Academy, that provides a multi-period, interdisciplinary perspective on one of the most important challenges currently facing humanity. In Chapter 3, Phil Stastney (Museum of London Archaeology) examines the ways in which peatland archaeological and archaeo-environmental datasets have been interpreted and understood.

Peatlands cover approximately one fifth of the surface of the island of Ireland, and are well established archives of palaeoenvironmental data, preserving sensitive records of past climatic change. Irish bogs are also well-known for their internationally-important archaeology, with over 3,500 peatland structures, mostly timber trackways of various kinds (see Fig. 1), recorded in the Irish Sites and Monuments Record. Ironically, this vast archaeological record has largely been revealed by the exploitation of bogs for peat extraction, a process which threatens this resource and add surgency to the need to adequately record and understand it. Meanwhile, increasing recognition of anthropogenic climate change since the 1990s has renewed interest in human–environment interactions. Given the direct association of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data in Irish bogs, peatland trackways present an opportunity to study in microcosm the relationship between past human activity and environmental change. As concerns about the impacts of future climate change and the loss of the Irish peatland archive grow, so too does the importance of investigating past human–environmental interactions in these unique, and ultimately irreplaceable, settings.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of research on past human–environmental interactions in Irish peatlands, and in particular to critically examine the ways in which peatland archaeological and palaeoenvironmental (‘archaeo-environmental’) datasets have been interpreted and understood. Following a brief overview of the literature, it becomes clear that there is no consensus on the influence of past environmental change on human activity in Irish bogs. In order to explore the reasons for this, the specific methodological challenges and theoretical considerations associated with the study of peatland archaeo-environmental datasets are then explored. A case study from a small group of bogs in Co. Tipperary is then introduced to illustrate these methodological issues and to evaluate a number of contrasting interpretive approaches, including a novel technique borrowed from the emerging field of ecocriticism. Finally, the various approaches are discussed and evaluated in relation to methodological and theoretical considerations, and the following overarching research questions are addressed:

1. What are the methodological challenges inherent in comparing the archaeological and palaeoenvironmental datasets obtained from Irish bogs?

2. What underlying theoretical assumptions underpin existing interpretations of past human–environment interactions in Irish bogs? Could theoretical developments in other disciplines offer any new insights?

3. How, armed with an understanding of the methodological challenges and recognition of underlying theoretical assumptions, could such novel insights be applied in practice?

To continue reading, purchase Climate and Society in Ireland.

Climate and Society in Ireland is a collection of essays, commissioned by the Royal Irish Academy, that provides a multi-period, interdisciplinary perspective on one of the most important challenges currently facing humanity. In Chapter 2, Meriel McClatchie (University College Dublin) and Aaron Potito (National University of Ireland Galway) review archaeological and palaeoecological evidence for environments and climate in Neolithic Ireland and consider their complex relationships with contemporary social change.

The Neolithic period in Ireland (4000–2500 BC) was a time of profound social change. When compared with the preceding Mesolithic period, Neolithic communities developed new ways of constructing their houses, burying their dead, and procuring and preparing their food. The introduction of farming into Ireland fundamentally changed how society was organised and the environments in which people lived. It is not yet clear if climatic change played a role in the initial uptake of farming during the Early Neolithic or in its decreased signal during the Middle–Later Neolithic. Recognising and understanding these changes have long been a focus of scholarship in Irish archaeology. Until relatively recently, the environmental and climatic contexts of these changes have been less well understood, in part because tracing environmental and climatic change is challenging. This issue can be addressed, however, through an interdisciplinary approach. Chapter 2 will review our understanding of environments and climate in Neolithic Ireland, drawing upon evidence from archaeology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, palynology, palaeolimnology, organic residues, stable isotopes and sediment geochemistry. These sources have been selected because they provide diverse datasets and theoretical perspectives; integration of these sources has the potential to facilitate more nuanced understandings of how people interacted with their environments in Neolithic Ireland, and the potential impacts of changing environments and climate. The paper will start by exploring how different data sources can be drawn upon, followed by a diachronic perspective towards examining environmental interactions and climatic change at different times during the Neolithic. The paper will discuss the implications of these data for understanding past societies, environments and climate, and concludes with an assessment of whether, and if so to what extent, social and environmental changes in Neolithic Ireland were linked.

To continue reading, purchase Climate and Society in Ireland.

Climate and Society in Ireland is a collection of essays, commissioned by the Royal Irish Academy, that provides a multi-period, interdisciplinary perspective on one of the most important challenges currently facing humanity. In Chapter 1, Graeme Warren (University College Dublin) reviews evidence for the potential impact of climate change on the earliest human settlement of Ireland.

Chapter 1 explores the relationship between climate change and the timing, character and extent of the settlement of Ireland by hunter-gatherers. This includes material from two geological epochs: recently identified evidence for Upper Palaeolithic activity in the Late Glacial period of the Pleistocene, and the more substantial evidence for Mesolithic activity in the Holocene. At one level, the influence of climate change on this topic is profound: the archaeological period names are themselves products of our understanding of climate change, with the shift from the Pleistocene to Holocene at 11,700 cal BP often seen as the transition from the Upper Palaeolithic to Mesolithic. However, whilst a very broad relationship between climate change and the timing of human colonisation of Ireland by hunter-gatherers can be identified, understanding how this influenced hunter-gatherers once the island was settled is not clear. The lack of data with appropriate resolution to examine this relationship is a key problem.

Understanding the relationship between climate change and human social transformations is one of archaeology’s ‘grand challenges’, potentially allowing the discipline to make a contribution to our understanding of one of the major existential crises facing humanity in the twenty-first century. Claiming that an understanding of how climate change affected small-scale societies 10,000 years ago may help us identify strategies and possibilities for responding to the impacts of anthropogenically driven climate change on an industrialised world in the present may seem far-fetched, but understanding the varied human responses to climate change is of great significance in a world where many still deny anthropogenic climate change, or find difficulty in responding to it meaningfully due to the apparently overwhelming scale of the challenge.

It is also important to recognise that contemporary hunting and gathering communities are amongst the most vulnerable to the effects of anthropogenically driven climate change. This is not because hunting and gathering groups are less resilient in the face of change, or less able to adapt their routines. An enormous body of work has demonstrated that hunter-gatherer societies are not solely products of their environment, but are the outcome of dynamic histories of change in forms of belief and tradition as well as expressions of agency within particular environments, which in turn shape those environments. Rather, today’s hunter-gatherers are especially vulnerable because they often live in environments where the effects of climate change are more marked, such as the Arctic. For such groups, changing climates and environments are having profound effects not just on the distribution of resources, but also on the ability to sustain traditions, customs and world views. It is for this reason that climate change presents an existential challenge. Their identities are bound to the places they inhabit and formed through routines of movement and practice. Simply moving or changing their ways of life is not an easy response, as it may mean the end of their traditional cultures. On this basis, over a decade ago the Inuit Circumpolar Conference argued that because climate change was leading to a loss of identity it was an infringement of their human rights.

Understanding the impact of climate change on past hunter-gatherers therefore provides an important contribution to a key problem. Ireland should be well placed to contribute to such debates, not least because it is an island in an ecologically marginal position at the north-western extremity of Europe. Ireland’s north Atlantic position also means that it should be sensitive to changes in oceanic thermohaline circulation, often considered a key contributor to Holocene climate change. Ireland has been an island since c. 16,000 cal BP8 and this island status is associated with a limited diversity of plants and animals. This may have augmented the effects of climate change in Ireland because of the greater vulnerability of an ecosystem with fewer components. Interdisciplinary work to examine the question of the comparative ecological complexity and resilience of early Holocene Ireland is a compelling need. Thus Ireland should provide an important case study of the relationship between climate change and hunter-gatherers. Unfortunately, as will be demonstrated in this paper, notwithstanding this potential, problems of data resolution mean this cannot be realised at present.

To continue reading, purchase Climate and Society in Ireland.