Cide Fields

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Excavation area in the peat with wall remnants and white pegs

The Céide Fields (Irish: Achaidh Chéide ) are one of the largest Neolithic field systems in the world on the northwest coast of Ireland in County Mayo . You are 30 km north of Ballina on the steep coast.

Excavations

In the excavation area, the collapsed walls of the property boundaries were exposed and their course marked by white stakes.

In 1993, a pyramid-shaped visitor center was opened at the foot of a hill. There is a research center in nearby Belderberg.

Neolithic bog pine in the visitor center

Discovery story

In 1930 the teacher Patrick Caulfield from Belderrig discovered wall remnants that were regularly running deep under the peat while cutting peat . His son Seamus Caulfield later studied archeology and made the site scientifically known in the 1970s. During the investigations, field complexes, parts of houses (e.g. a Bronze Age round house with a fireplace) and megalithic systems came to light, which were hidden by the growth of the raised bog . During the research work, the walls under the peat are probed non-destructively with drill rods up to four meters long. The full extent of the system has not yet been recorded.

interpretation

5000 to 6000 years ago there was a settlement with fields. The Neolithic residents apparently lived on individual farmsteads that were separated from each other by straight walls. Presumably they formed a well-organized community of arable farmers and cattle herders who divided the land into even blocks and cleared large areas of forest.

See also

literature

  • Caulfield, Céide and Mayo 5000 (interview with Seamus Caulfield). Archeology Ireland 7/2, 1993, 11-13.
  • Seamus Caulfield, Neolithic fields: the Irish evidence. In HC Bowen / Peter J. Fowler (eds.), Early land allotment in the British Isles. A survey of recent work, Oxford. BAR, British Series 48, 1978, 137-43.
  • Seamus Caulfield, Céide Fields and Belderrig guide. Killala, Morrigan 1988.
  • Seamus Caulfield / RG O'Donnell / PI Mitchell, 14 C dating of a Neolithic field system at Céide Fields, County Mayo, Ireland. Radiocarbon 40, 1998, 629-40.
  • Michael O'Connell / Karen Molloy, Farming and Woodland Dynamics in Ireland during the Neolithic. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 101B, 1/2, 2001 (From Palaeoecology to Conservation: An Interdisciplinary Vision), 99-128.
  • Lucy Verrill, Richard Tipping, A palynological and geoarchaeological investigation into Bronze Age farming at Belderg Beg, Co. Mayo, Ireland. Journal of Archaeological Science 37, 2010, 1214-1225.

Web links

Commons : Céide Fields  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 54 ° 18 '26 "  N , 9 ° 27' 28"  W.