Iron Age Roof Archaeology Ireland

The iron age was a period in human history that started between 1200 b c.

Iron age roof archaeology ireland.

Most are now in a poor state of repair but the most complete examples can only be said to resemble the cooling towers of modern power stations. Since the 1960s archaeologists have recognized navan fort as a complex religious site that was used by the elite as long ago as the late bronze age and the iron age or about 1000 b c. In 1985 the flat cap stone was temporarily removed to allow replacement of one of the support stones which was cracked and in danger of collapse. These two thousand year old stone structures date from the iron age and it is estimated that at least seven hundred brochs once existed across scotland.

Burnt animal bone from one of these gullies produced a date of 160 bc ad 60 2025 30 bp. The people built walls made of either stone or of wooden posts joined by wattle and daub panels and topped with a conical thatched roof. This view has been somewhat upset by the recent carbon dating of the wood shaft of a very elegant iron spearhead found in the river inny which gave a date of between 811 and 673 bc. This is an important site not only because it adds to the limited corpus of excavated iron age settlement sites in ireland but also due to the presence of high status metalworking and artefacts.

Where houses do occur they appear to have been circular like their bronze age predecessors. The pilot project was intended to establish a data collection and research strategy. Iron age sites a suspicion that needed to be tested. It is not easy said dr katharina becker a lecturer in archaeology at university college cork who is delving into the landscape of south eastern ireland to find out what people grew and ate in the iron age as far back as 2 700 years ago.

500bc 400ad the iron age remains a somewhat enigmatic period in irish prehistory with a relative dearth of settlement evidence compared to earlier and later periods. It dates back to the neolithic period around 3 800bc. The irish iron age has long been thought to begin around 500 bc and then continue until the christian era in ireland which brought some written records and therefore the end of prehistoric ireland. Roundhouses were the standard form of housing built in britain from the bronze age throughout the iron age and in some areas well into the sub roman period.

Iron age ireland c. A reconstruction of a british iron age celtic roundhouse.