An Interdisciplinary Approach to Historic Diet and Foodways: the FoodCult Project

This research note introduces the methodology of the FoodCult Project, with the aim of stimulating discussion regarding the interdisciplinary potential for historical food studies. The project represents the first major attempt to establish both the fundamentals of everyday diet, and the cultural ‘meaning’ of food and drink in early modern Ireland, c 1550-1650. This was a period of major economic development, unprecedented intercultural contact, but also of conquest, colonisation and war, and the study focusses on Ireland as a case-study for understanding the role of food in a complex society. Moving beyond the colonial narrative of Irish social and economic development, it enlarges the study of food and identity to examine neglected themes in Irish historiography, including gender, class and religious identities, as expressed through the consumption of food and drink. Taking advantage of exciting recent archaeological discoveries and the increased accessibility of the archaeological evidence, the project develops a ground-breaking interdisciplinary approach, merging micro-historical analytical techniques with cutting-edge molecular science, experimental archaeology, data modelling and statistical analysis, to examine what was eaten, where, why and by whom, at a level of detail previously deemed impossible for this period in history. This overview provides a framework to facilitate the interpretation of descriptive literary, visual, and other representative historical sources for diet, building a bridge between ideas and practises in the development of early modern foodways. The project will lead to unparalleled collaboration across the sciences and humanities, serving as a model for future comparative interdisciplinary work across diverse chronologies and regions

Radiocarbon dating of a multi-phase passage tomb on Baltinglass Hill, Co. Wicklow, Ireland

Baltinglass is a multi-chamber Neolithic passage tomb in Co. Wicklow, Ireland, excavated in the 1930s. This paper presents the results of a radiocarbon dating programme on charred wheat grains and hazelnut shell found underlying the cairn, and on cremated human bone found within and near two of the monument’s five chambers. The results are surprising, in that three of the six determinations on calcined bone pre-date by one or two centuries the charred cereals and hazelnut shells sealed under the cairn, dating to c. 3600–3400 cal bc. Of the remaining three bone results, one is coeval with the charred plant remains, while the final two can be placed in the period 3300/3200–2900 cal bc, that is more traditionally associated with developed passage tombs. A suggested sequence of construction is presented beginning with a simple tomb lacking a cairn, followed by a burning event – perhaps a ritual preparation of the ground – involving the deposition of cereal grains and other materials, very rapidly and intentionally sealed under a layer of clay, in turn followed by at least two phases involving the construction of more substantial chambers and associated cairns. What was already a complex funerary monument has proven to be even more complex, with a history spanning at least six centuries

The Changing Face of Neolithic and Bronze Age Ireland: A Big Data Approach to the Settlement and Burial Records

This paper synthesizes and analyses the spatial and temporal patterns of archaeological sites in Ireland spanning the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age transition (4300-1900 cal BC). Included are a large number of unpublished, newly discovered sites excavated through development-led projects. Data were also sourced from national archives, published excavation reports and on-line databases. Software tools were developed to deal with the varying nature and resolution of these datasets, allowing chronology to be considered in the analysis to a degree that is usually not possible in prehistoric studies. Summed radiocarbon probabilities are used to examine the dataset using context- and sample-sensitive approaches. Visualisations of spatial and chronological data illustrate the expansion of Early Neolithic settlement, followed by an apparent attenuation of all settlement activity. The Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods are characterised by a resurgence and diversification of activity. To assess the significance of these observations, Irish radiocarbon data are compared to an idealized model derived from North American data. Even after taking various considerations into account, human population increases can be suggested to have occurred during the Early and Late Neolithic periods. Gaps and biases in the data are discussed and priorities for future work are identified

Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization.

In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in earth system models is currently oversimplified. As a result, there are large uncertainties in the current understanding of the past and current state of the earth system. In order to improve representation of the variety and scale of impacts that past land use had on the earth system, a global effort is underway to aggregate and synthesize archaeological and historical evidence of land use systems. Here we present a simple, hierarchical classification of land use systems designed to be used with archaeological and historical data at a global scale and a schema of codes that identify land use practices common to a range of systems, both implemented in a geospatial database. The classification scheme and database resulted from an extensive process of consultation with researchers worldwide. Our scheme is designed to deliver consistent, empirically robust data for the improvement of land use models, while simultaneously allowing for a comparative, detailed mapping of land use relevant to the needs of historical scholars. To illustrate the benefits of the classification scheme and methods for mapping historical land use, we apply it to Mesopotamia and Arabia at 6 kya (c. 4000 BCE). The scheme will be used to describe land use by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) LandCover6k working group, an international project comprised of archaeologists, historians, geographers, paleoecologists, and modelers. Beyond this, the scheme has a wide utility for creating a common language between research and policy communities, linking archaeologists with climate modelers, biodiversity conservation workers and initiatives

Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization

In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in earth system models is currently oversimplified. As a result, there are large uncertainties in the current understanding of the past and current state of the earth system. In order to improve representation of the variety and scale of impacts that past land use had on the earth system, a global effort is underway to aggregate and synthesize archaeological and historical evidence of land use systems. Here we present a simple, hierarchical classification of land use systems designed to be used with archaeological and historical data at a global scale and a schema of codes that identify land use practices common to a range of systems, both implemented in a geospatial database. The classification scheme and database resulted from an extensive process of consultation with researchers worldwide. Our scheme is designed to deliver consistent, empirically robust data for the improvement of land use models, while simultaneously allowing for a comparative, detailed mapping of land use relevant to the needs of historical scholars. To illustrate the benefits of the classification scheme and methods for mapping historical land use, we apply it to Mesopotamia and Arabia at 6 kya (c. 4000 BCE). The scheme will be used to describe land use by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) LandCover6k working group, an international project comprised of archaeologists, historians, geographers, paleoecologists, and modelers. Beyond this, the scheme has a wide utility for creating a common language between research and policy communities, linking archaeologists with climate modelers, biodiversity conservation workers and initiatives

Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization

In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in earth system models is currently oversimplified. As a result, there are large uncertainties in the current understanding of the past and current state of the earth system. In order to improve repre- sentation of the variety and scale of impacts that past land use had on the earth system, a global effort is underway to aggregate and synthesize archaeological and historical evi- dence of land use systems. Here we present a simple, hierarchical classification of land use systems designed to be used with archaeological and historical data at a global scale and a schema of codes that identify land use practices common to a range of systems, both imple- mented in a geospatial database. The classification scheme and database resulted from an extensive process of consultation with researchers worldwide. Our scheme is designed to deliver consistent, empirically robust data for the improvement of land use models, while simultaneously allowing for a comparative, detailed mapping of land use relevant to the needs of historical scholars. To illustrate the benefits of the classification scheme and meth- ods for mapping historical land use, we apply it to Mesopotamia and Arabia at 6 kya (c. 4000 BCE). The scheme will be used to describe land use by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) LandCover6k working group, an international project comprised of archaeologists, historians, geographers, paleoecologists, and modelers. Beyond this, the scheme has a wide utility for creating a common language between research and policy communities, link- ing archaeologists with climate modelers, biodiversity conservation workers and initiatives.publishedVersio

Exploring the ‘somewhere’ and ‘someone’ else: an integrated approach to Ireland’s earliest farming practice

23rd Annual Meeting of the European Associaton of Archaeologists, EAA 2017. Maastricht, 30 August - 3 September 2017One of the great successes of Childe’s concept of the Neolithic Revolution was the emphasis it placed on the new – on a ‘package’ of related innovations in subsistence, technology and social relations as a rupture, a break, a new beginning. This is especially important given long-standing characterisations of hunting and gathering groups as unchanging over time and without historical agency or dynamism (Sassaman and Holly, 2011). Since Childe, the Neolithic revolution has been substantially unpacked, and in areas of primary domestication, we recognise that the process was long, variable and multi-faceted (e.g. Finlayson, 2013; Larsen et al., 2014).Irish Research CouncilIrish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences2020-07-30 JG: Item was originally listed as being published as a chapter in: Gron K., Sørensen L., Rowley-Conwy P. (eds.). Farmers at the Frontier: A Pan-European Perspective on Neolithisation. ISBN: 9781789251401. https://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/farmers-at-the-frontier.htm

The Archaeology of Livestock and Cereal Production in Early Medieval Ireland, AD 400-1100

Early medieval Ireland was an overwhelmingly rural landscape, with individual farmsteads (raths and crannogs), fields, and route-ways set in a highly managed agricultural landscape. In this rural landscape farming was the constant in people’s daily lives. The majority of the community, especially the ordinary and un-free members of society, such as the low-status commoners, hereditary serfs and slaves, would have spent most of their lives at work in the fields - herding cattle, sheep and pigs, ploughing, sowing and harvesting crops, or building and repairing field-walls. In the home, the daily lives of men and women would have been dominated by domestic activities relating to agriculture, whether this was in terms of preparing milk and cheeses, grinding grain for flour, salting meats for winter storage, or spinning and weaving wool.Heritage CouncilQueen's University BelfastUCD School of Archaeolog