Advances In Irish Quaternary Studies

This book provides a new synthesis of the published research on the Quaternary of Ireland. It reviews a number of significant advances in the last three decades on the understanding of the pattern and chronology of the Irish Quaternary glacial, interglacial, floristic and occupation records. Those utilising the latest technology have enabled significant advances in geochronology using accelerated mass spectrometry, cosmogenic nuclide extraction and optically stimulated luminescence amongst others. This has been commensurate with high-resolution geomorphological mapping of the Irish land surface and continental shelf using a wide range of remote sensing techniques including MBES and LIDAR. Thus the time is ideal for a state of the art publication, which provides a series of authoritative reviews of the Irish Quaternary incorporating these most recent advances.

European Glacial Landscapes: Last Deglaciation brings together relevant experts on the history of glaciers and their impact on the landscape of the main European regions. Soon after the Last Glacial Maximum, a rapid process of the glacial retreat began throughout Europe. This was interrupted several times by abrupt climate cooling, which caused rapid, although moderate, re-advance of the glaciers, until the beginning of the Holocene when the climate became relatively stable and warm. These successive glacial advances and retreats during the Last Deglaciation have shaped much of the European landscape, reflecting abrupt climatic fluctuations. As our knowledge of abrupt climate changes since the Last Glacial Maximum progresses, new uncertainties arise. These are critical for understanding how climate changes disseminate through Europe, such as the lag between climate changes and the expansion or contraction of glaciers as well as the role of the large continental ice sheets on the European climate. All these contributions are included in the book, which is an invaluable resource for geographers, geologists, environmental scientists, paleoclimatologists, as well as researchers in physics and earth sciences. Provides a synthesis that highlights the main similarities or differences, through both space and time, during the Last Deglaciation of Europe Features research from experts in quaternary, geomorphology, palaeoclimatology, palaeoceanography and palaeoglaciology on the Last Deglaciation in Europe during Termination 1 and the important Late Pleistocene-Holocene transition Includes detailed colour figures and maps, providing a comprehensive overview of the glacial landscapes of Europe during the last deglaciation

Explores the Irish Mesolithic - the period after the end of the last Ice Age when Ireland was home to hunter-gatherer communities, mostly from about 10,000-6,000 years ago. At this time, Ireland was an island world, with striking similarities and differences to its European neighbours - not least in terms of the terrestrial ecology created by its island status. To understand the communities of hunter-gatherers who lived there, it is essential that we consider the connections established between people and the other beings and materials with which they shared the world and through which they grew into it. Understanding the Mesolithic means paying attention to the animals, plants, spirits and things with which hunting and gathering groups formed kinship relationships and in collaboration with which they experienced life. The book closes with a reflection on hunting and gathering in Ireland today. The overriding aim of the book is to provide a point of entry into the lives of the Irish Mesolithic, to show the different ways in which people have lived on this island, and to show how we might narrate those lives.

This is the first book to examine the full range of the evidence for Irish charms, from medieval to modern times. As Ireland has one of the oldest literatures in Europe, and also one of the most comprehensively recorded folklore traditions, it affords a uniquely rich body of evidence for such an investigation. The collection includes surveys of broad aspects of the subject (charm scholarship, charms in medieval tales, modern narrative charms, nineteenth-century charm documentation); dossiers of the evidence for specific charms (a headache charm, a nightmare charm, charms against bleeding); a study comparing the curses of saints with those of poets; and an account of a newly discovered manuscript of a toothache charm. The practices of a contemporary healer are described on the basis of recent fieldwork, and the connection between charms and storytelling is foregrounded in chapters on the textual amulet known as the Leabhar Eoin, on the belief that witches steal butter, and on the nature of the belief that effects supernatural cures.

This open access volume provides for the first time a comprehensive description and scientific evaluation of underwater archaeological finds referring to human occupation of the continental shelf around the coastlines of Europe and the Mediterranean when sea levels were lower than present. These are the largest body of underwater finds worldwide, amounting to over 2500 find spots, ranging from individual stone tools to underwater villages with unique conditions of preservation. The material reviewed here ranges in date from the Lower Palaeolithic period to the Bronze Age and covers 20 countries bordering all the major marine basins from the Atlantic coasts of Ireland and Norway to the Black Sea, and from the western Baltic to the eastern Mediterranean. The finds from each country are presented in their archaeological context, with information on the history of discovery, conditions of preservation and visibility, their relationship to regional changes in sea-level and coastal geomorphology, and the institutional arrangements for their investigation and protection. Editorial introductions summarise the findings from each of the major marine basins. There is also a final section with extensive discussion of the historical background and the legal and regulatory frameworks that inform the management of the underwater cultural heritage and collaboration between offshore industries, archaeologists and government agencies. The volume is based on the work of COST Action TD0902 SPLASHCOS, a multi-disciplinary and multi-national research network supported by the EU-funded COST organisation (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). The primary readership is research and professional archaeologists, marine and Quaternary scientists, cultural-heritage managers, commercial and governmental organisations, policy makers, and all those with an interest in the sea floor of the continental shelf and the human impact of changes in climate, sea-level and coastal geomorphology.

This is the story of life in Ireland – a story half a billion years in the making. With its castles, crannogs and passage tombs, Ireland is a land where history looms large, but the saga of life on this island dates back millions of years before the first people set foot here. In Life in Ireland, Conor O’Brien guides the reader on a journey around the island to explore the history of natural life here, from the Jurassic Coast of Antrim to the great Ice Age bone-beds of Cork. Along the way, we’ll meet some of the astonishing creatures to have called Ireland home through the ages: shelled monsters; huge marine lizards; armoured dinosaurs; giant deer; mighty mammoths. Vital strands in the story of life on Earth have left their mark here, including some of the first creatures to crawl onto land or take to the wing. This epic journey will take us from the first fossils to the present day, to see how our wildlife has adapted to the human age and explore what the future might hold for life in Ireland.

Exploring sacred mountains around the world, this book examines whether bonding and reverence to a mountain is intrinsic to the mountain, constructed by people, or a mutual encounter. Chapters explore mountains in England, Scotland, Wales, Italy, Ireland, the Himalaya, Japan, Greece, USA, Asia and South America, and embrace the union of sky, landscape and people to examine the religious dynamics between human and non-human entities. This book takes as its starting point the fact that mountains physically mediate between land and sky and act as metaphors for bridges from one realm to another, recognising that mountains are relational and that landscapes form personal and group cosmologies. The book fuses ideas of space, place and material religion with cultural environmentalism and takes an interconnected approach to material religio-landscapes. In this way it fills the gap between lived religious traditions, personal reflection, phenomenology, historical context, environmental philosophy, myths and performativity. In defining material religion as active engagement with mountain-forming and humanshaping landscapes, the research and ideas presented here provide theories that are widely applicable to other forms of material religion.