Funerary practice in Ireland in the Early Bronze Age
Channel: The Ulster Archaeological Society
Date: 2022-02-22

Funerary practice in Ireland in the Early Bronze Age and what it tells us about the people who were buried and the society they came from.

This paper will examine the chronology of the development of the single burial tradition. It will demonstrate how an analysis of the dating of these burials shows a tendency for new burial practices to emerge and continue alongside older practices during this era. The existence of a previously unsuspected parsimonious variation of the single burial tradition, the “potless-burial”, which seems to emerge in the 21st century BC and which continues alongside the more complex variants of the tradition, will be discussed. It will be proposed that these simple burials, alongside the more complex variants of the single burial tradition, show an increasingly complex set of burial customs which probably indicate, an increasingly complex, and hierarchical society. It will also be suggested that these humble burials may provide a link to, or possibly an origin point for, the simplified burial traditions of the later Bronze Age and beyond. The paper will finish with an examination of social context and ideology which may help explain evolution in the single burial tradition in Ireland from the Chalcolithic to Middle Bronze Age and possibly provide a backdrop for discussion of the changes that were to come.

Dr Cormac McSparron graduated with a BA in Archaeology and Modern History from QUB, an Mphil degree from QUB entitled "The Medieval Coarse Pottery of Ulster" and a PhD from QUB, ““Statistical analysis of the single burial tradition in Early Bronze Age Ireland and some implications for social structure”.
He worked for the Environment and Heritage Service on excavation and post-excavation projects from 1991 to 1995 and was active in private sector rescue archaeology from 1997 to 2001 before joining the Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork as a Fieldwork Director in 2002. He has directed and published a number of important excavations of varying types and periods, and has written a number of important research papers. Cormac has a (too?) wide range of research interests including, the archaeology of migration and theoretical approaches to migration studies, funerary archaeology, the emergence of complex societies, the application of radiocarbon dating to archaeological problems, the Irish ​Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, Medieval potting traditions in Ireland, especially coarse potting, and why some periods of Irish prehistory and early-history are aceramic.