History & Heritage Guide Fermanagh County Museum Enniskillen Castle Castle Barracks Enniskillen Co. Fermanagh N. Ireland BT74 7HL Tel: + 44 (0) 28 6632 5000 Fax: +44 (0) 28 6632 7342 Email: [email protected] Web:www.enniskillencastle.co.uk Page 1 History & Heritage Guide: Lower Lough Erne. Photograph by Shay Nethercott. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. New Arrivals About 12,000 years ago the ice, which had covered much of Ireland in the last Ice Age, was in full retreat and a lush meadowland was replacing the frozen, tundra landscape. Trees began to creep into the meadow – first juniper, then willow and birch, occasionally aspen and, on limestone soils, The Claddagh Glen. Photograph by Shay guelder rose – creating Ireland’s first woodlands. The melting ice left behind Nethercott. Copyright of Fermanagh vast, shallow stretches of open water. A compressed compost of decaying County Museum. plants collected at the shores of these loughs. Encouraged by the warm, wet climate, the decaying material consolidated to form bogs, which extended out into the loughs. Early in this new post-glacial period, Ireland remained joined to Britain and it is conceivable that, not only did plants – especially the trees of Ireland’s new woodlands – and animals cross to Ireland over these land bridges, but also the first settlers. As the climate warmed, ice melted and sea levels rose: gradually Ireland became an island. The first people arrived in Ireland over 9,000 years ago. It was around 6,500 years ago – late in the Middle Stone Age – that people first came to A Mesolithic family gets ready to roast a Fermanagh. They found a landscape of wood and water. The woodland – hare. Diorama by Gordon Johnson. Copyright of Fermanagh County alder, oak and elm on the lowlands, and birch and pine on the uplands – Museum. Life in the Mesolithic period. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. Page 2 History & Heritage Guide: was tall and very dense and the water became their highway into and through the county. These Stone Age people were hunters and gatherers. Their hunting grounds were mainly at the water’s edge where they caught fish and wildfowl; they also hunted for small mammals of the woodland. They harvested the wild nuts, berries and grasses, which grew around them to complete a resourceful and balanced diet. The relics, which these people left behind, are their stone tools. Very little else of their lifestyle, which was so ephemeral, has survived in Fermanagh. At Cushrush Island on the eastern shore of Lough Macnean seven mudstone axes and a double-pointed pick were uncovered, a significant find for the Mesolithic period in Ireland. Life in Neolithic times. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. First Farmers About 6,000 years ago a new wave of incomers arrived in Fermanagh. They were spearheading a revolution in the Stone Age way of life: they were the first farmers. These pioneer farmers journeyed from Britain and Europe carrying with them seed corn and domestic breeds of cattle, pig, sheep and goats – all they needed to establish a farming community. They found a densely wooded landscape – mature stands of hazel, oak elm and alder, and on the uplands, over 700 feet, pine. The soils laid down in the Ice Age had been enriched and deepened by the searching root systems of the trees of the mature woodland. The first farmers seem to have settled high up where Grinding corn using a saddle quern. the woodland was probably less dense but the soils still fertile. They cleared Copyright of Fermanagh County the woodland, cutting down the trees and burning the stumps – ‘slash and Museum. Clearing forests, building field walls and preparing the soil for planting are all part of a day’s work for this Neolithic family. Diorama by Gordon Johnson. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. Page 3 History & Heritage Guide: burn’ farming – and used the wood to build their homesteads. Gradually, they imposed an order on the landscape, marking it out into fields with earthen banks and drystone walls. Like all pioneers, though, they adopted the lifestyle of their hunter-gatherer neighbours, fishing, hunting and collecting food. The enduring legacy of these first farmers is their giant stone burial monuments – megalithic tombs. Today in these tombs we find, buried This court tomb in Aghanaglack had four large chambers for cremated burials and alongside the dead, sherds of pottery they used in their households. Through an open court area at either end which much of Ireland, four classes of tomb recur – court tombs, portal tombs, may have been used for funeral ceremonies. Photograph by Mike passage tombs and wedge tombs. All of these tomb classes are present in Hartwell, courtesy of Environment & Fermanagh. The passage tombs – there is a concentration of them in the Heritage Service, DOE. Boyne Valley near Dublin – are often spectacular. Newgrange was surrounded by a brilliant white quartz façade. The sunlight from the winter solstice streamed through a roof box, illuminating the passage and burial chamber of the monument. Passage tombs are scarce in Fermanagh, but court tombs and portal tombs are common here. Extensive trade networks were forged by the first farmers. Stone axes from a quarry in Antrim were sent out along trade routes as far afield as southern England. Life in the Bronze Age. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. The Metalworkers About 4,500 years ago rich veins of gold and copper were found in Ireland by prospectors. The finds sparked a new metal-working industry. Tin – most likely imported from Cornwall or Brittany – was fused with the copper to produce bronze. Bronze and gold objects were traded further afield, through a European wide network. For at least1,500 years, until the discovery of iron , bronze was the workhorse of the Irish metal-working industry – used for making tools and weapons – whilst gold was fashioned into high value personal ornaments. Page 4 History & Heritage Guide: Bronze Age Rock Art from the hillside above Boho at Reyfad, with an impressive design of concentric circles surrounding small round hollows. Photograph by Shay Nethercott. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. The tradition of building monuments in stone continued throughout the early part of the Bronze Age. Often the dead were buried, either inhumed or cremated, in graves lined with stone slabs – cists: sometimes the burials were solitary, often they were congregated in cemeteries. Or they were inserted into the megalithic tombs built in the Stone Age. Many of Ireland’s standing stones and stone circles may have been built at this time. The pottery from the period – beakers, food vessels, urns and pygmy cups – is a testament to the great melting pot of people and ideas in Ireland at this time. As metal-working was born, farming on the uplands – the pioneers’ heartland In the Bronze Age, Stone Circles like this – went into decline. Ceaseless clearance and intensive farming exhausted one from Drumskinny, may have been places for religious ceremonies, perhaps the soil precipitating the growth and spread of blanket bog. The farming rituals involving sun worship. Copyright communities were forced down on to the densely wooded lowlands and of Fermanagh County Museum. heavy clay soil. As the agricultural community re-asserted itself in the lowlands, the bronze and gold working tradition blossomed out into an age of achievement. Between 1200BC and 600 BC prestigious, luxury items were wrought by the master craftsmen of the Bronze Age: bronze cauldrons, buckets and trumpets, gold torcs, dress fasteners, earrings and bracelets. During this Later Bronze Age period farming also reached new heights. Metal farm tools – such as bronze socketed sickles and axes – were available. The ox-drawn cart was brought into use. But the critical step forward was the introduction of the wooden ard plough. Hill forts and ritual enclosures began to appear on the landscape, on sites which later became the seats of the ancient kings of Ulster: Knockaulin This Early Bronze Age gold lunula was found in a bog at Cooltrain, north-east of (Dun Ailinee, the ancient capital of Leinster), Rath na Ríogh at Tara and Site Enniskillen. Photograph reproduced by A at Navan (Emain Macha) are ritual enclosures. These grand monuments the kind permission of the Trustees of the National Museums and Galleries of suggest that Bronze Age society had split between warrior aristocracy and Northern Ireland. commoner, with hill-forts being strongholds of society’s echelons. Exotic finds Page 5 History & Heritage Guide: from these enclosures – Scandinavian amber beads for example – suggest a society with solid cultural and trade links far into Europe. Lake dwellings – early crannogs – were also built in this epoch, consolidating a tradition which continued in the 17th century AD. Lough MacNean’s crannogs have yielded material from the Later Bronze Age. Boa Island in the Iron Age. Conjectural drawing by D. Warner. Copyright of Fermanagh County Museum. The Celts and The Age of Iron For three hundred years after about 600BC the society and culture of the Later Bronze Age decayed. During this hiatus, the first breath of Celtic influence was felt in Ireland. By about 300Bc some Celtic adventurers had arrived. nd These beads, made of imported amber, In the 2 century AD, the Greek geographer, Ptolemy, made a map of were found alongside the bronze knife the known world and its people. Ireland occupied the western edge of this and chisel in a bog in Killycreen West, th th near Belcoo. Photograph reproduced map. In the 7 and 8 centuries AD, Christian monks transcribed the ancient by the kind permission of the Trustees of legends from the spoken tradition of the people of Ireland.