Chapter One: The Hidden Lives of the Irish Landscape

Introduction

The Irish Landscape is known for a history that dates back millions of years. What can the physical landscape tell us about how Ireland was formed? What can it tell us about who lived on the island and how they lived?

In this chapter, we explore these questions through two case studies that cover two different points in time in the Irish Landscape: Clogherhead, a fishing village in County Louth, that tells us a story of how Ireland was physically formed over 400 million years ago; and Céide Fields, an area on the west coast of Ireland, in County Mayo, that dates nearly 6,000 years old, and tells a story of how a farming community lived on Ireland’s West coast during the Neolithic period (i.e. 3,500 B.C.E.).

These case studies focus on sites that speak to the formation of Ireland, both physically and through human encounters, across thousands and millions of years, respectively.

These are just two of many historical sites – of which, numerous are said to have been built by, or influenced through, human encounters. If you are interested in exploring additional sites on the island that hold physical and human histories that date back thousands of years, you might want to learn about Newgrange in County Meath – a burial mound and passage tomb built in the Neolithic period (estimated around 3200 B.C.E); or Glendalough in County Wicklow – an early Medieval monastic settlement situated within a mountainous region that was formed through glacial movement at the end of the last ice age, approximately between 73,000 to 10,000 years ago (County Wicklow Heritage 2020).

Through this chapter, we will see:

The physical, human, and cultural landscapes of Ireland have an effect on each other, and we can understand more about Irish geography through an in-depth engagement with these three intertwined threads.