Folks,

While browsing Herity & Eogan's 'Ireland in Prehistory' I was taken by the
opening
statement on the chapter introducing the bronze age. Its certainty is perhaps
the
most striking feature:

"Knowledge of metallurgy is an important adjunct to any society abd in Ireland
it
appears that the introduction of metal-working can be attributed to the arrival
of
new peoples and the establishment of new societies. Metallurgy is one of the
facets
of these new societies; single grave burial (especially in the eastern part of
the
country) is another."

I'm tempted to just leave it at that, with a final word: 'discuss'...

However, I won't. The whole concept of mass migration, of cultural change being
an
accompaniment to population incursions and so on has received a serious knocking
over
these past few years, and I suspect that many writers who wrote in the past
similar
statements about this and other periods in Ireland's prehistory would not write
with
such certainty today. However, the arrival of metallurgy is a 'big thing', and
as it
seems to have been accompanied by certain other changes, we cannot escape the
feeling
that some serious social changes were underway. The question is really whether
we
*need* to see this as a case of a new population group arriving or not, whether
it
can be put down to a sort of 'cultural tide' drifting across Europe, or just to
trade
bringing metal objects, then metal-working technology into Ireland...

This is a pretty major issue, and I'd be most interested to hear peoples'
views...

MAQQI