A centuries-old belief that the 3,500-year-old tombs of Brú na Bóinne were burial places for the elite of Neolithic Irish society has been shattered by research showing a much wider selection of Ireland’s population was buried there.
So says a UCD-led group of archeologists, whose findings portray a less hierarchical picture of daily life in Neolithic Ireland than previously assumed.
Previous genetic evidence suggested that Newgrange and other large passage tombs like it were built by a close-knit family of elite rulers who buried their dead inside these monuments.
“Traditionally, it has been considered that large passage tombs like Newgrange were the burial places of special or important people, often assumed to be wealthy, elite individuals who may have belonged to the same family or group,” said Dr Neil Carlin, of the School of Archaeology at UCD.
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“However, our integration of the results of previous genetic research, along with our close examination of the archaeological evidence from megalithic tombs, indicates that most individuals buried together in Ireland’s Neolithic monuments were not biologically related,” said Dr Carlin, who conducted the new research with his colleague Jessica Smyth, associate professor of Archaeology at UCD, and a wider international team of archaeologists.
The new research debunks the “myth” that only the elite were socially active. It reveals a social pattern of small, mobile groups of people who moved frequently with their animals and gathered seasonally.
“These groups would meet with their extended community at their shared monuments to progress funerary rites for some of their dead, renew old relationships, and form new ones,” said Dr Carlin.
“In this way, they built their kin networks over hundreds of kilometres and many generations through communal feasting, ceremonies, and work, as well as through having children together.”
Dr Smyth said: “In the case of passage tombs like Newgrange, these individuals are even more distantly related than in other smaller tomb types.”
After about 3,600 BC, just before the passage tombs at Newgrange were built, the biological ties between people began to expand, covering greater parts of the island. People were now interacting with one another more often, with greater intensity, and over longer geographical distances than ever before.
“People’s lifestyles may have become more mobile: houses become ephemeral and modest in size, subsistence practices seem to focus on cattle and pigs, while forests expand and evidence for cereals reduces,” Dr Smyth said.
Archaeologists still don’t fully understand exactly how families were defined in Neolithic Ireland – whether people defined themselves by ties of birth or actions.
“In many societies, genetics, blood or biology are neither a determining nor a necessary factor of relatedness: people make their kin through cultural practices conducted as part of the particular context of their society, such as living, working or burying their dead together,” said Dr Carlin.
The findings were reported in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
