Hunting and collective records of the Irish prehistory
Hunting and collecting evidence from Irish prehistoric times is poor overall, but was discovered on Mesolithic living spaces and in megalithic systems , stone boxes and in or under burial mounds from the younger Stone Age and the Bronze Age .
Malacofauna
Neolithic
A conch shell was found under the endstone of the Court tomb at Shalwy , in County Donegal , an area where such molluscs , as clam clusters show, were continuously eaten. In the passage tomb of Four Knocks in County Meath , were scallops and oyster shells found. A pile of undetermined mussels was found under the hill of Knocklea, County Dublin .
Bronze age
A mussel shell from the Bronze Age was in the stone box of Claretuam in County Galway found. Others were found in the stone chest at Kinard, County Mayo , along with a jar and a skeleton in a crouched position.
Land fauna
Mesolithic
While deer at the mesolithic site at Mount Sandel in County Londonderry were only recorded to a small extent, they were found to a significantly higher degree at the mesolithic site at Lough Boora in County Offaly .
Neolithic
Red deer bones are reported from the Lyles Hill site in County Antrim. There are other reports from the Court Tombs of Aghanaglack and Legland in County Fermanagh and Deerpark in County Sligo . Red deer antlers in the form of processed sprouts were found in several passage tombs, including in Newgrange and a needle in Fourknocks 1. A total of nine pieces of antler come from the Newgrange bell- shaped period.
Bronze age
The dead woman was buried with a seven-year-old stallion and the remains of a red deer in an early Bronze Age woman's grave under a hill near Farta, County Galway. The round stone mound of Knockast in County Westmeath , which, in addition to around 44 burials, also contained antler shoots and bones, is one of the relatively few places that the tusks of the wild boar have passed down. In the Late Bronze Age of Ballinderry, County Offaly, the red deer is documented in small numbers.
Birds
Despite rich Mesolithic finds from Mount Sandel, where capercaillie, gnaws, wigeons and mallards, snipes and wood pigeons were hunted, there is little evidence of bird hunting in later prehistoric times . Only unspecified bird bones in the Neolithic complex of Audleystown and late Bronze Age wild duck bones from Ballinderry, in County Offaly are known.
literature
- Laurence Flanagan : Ancient Ireland: Life Before the Celts. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1998.