Hunter gatherers in Ireland: The Irish mesolithic – new perspectives

Friday 28th February 2025 at  8pm.

Location: Sligo Educational Centre, ATU, Ballinode, F91 WFW9

The archaeology of hunter-gatherers is a distinctive subfield of archaeology which, in many parts of the world, combines archaeology, genetics, linguistics, oral tradition, and ethnohistories. In some parts of the world collaborative research with Indigenous communities enriches archaeological approaches by combining archaeological and Indigenous forms of knowledge and understanding.

In Ireland, understanding deep-time hunter-gatherers is mainly an archaeological task, supplemented by a small amount of useful genetic evidence. Because hunter-gatherer archaeology is the oldest archaeology in Ireland it has been most transformed by the passage of time. It is inherently interdisciplinary, requiring the combination of palaeo-environmental sciences to understand both the changing landscapes and climates that characterised the Mesolithic period.

Lecturer

Dr Graeme Warren is  a Professor in the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin.  His  research includes hunter-gatherers, humans in mountain landscapes, and long-term landscape histories. He a specialist in the Archaeology of Hunter-Gatherers, with primary research focused mainly in NW Europe. He is  President of the International Society for Hunter-Gatherer Research. He leads active research projects focusing on hunter-gatherer material, culture and landscapes in Ireland and Scotland, and is a collaborator on a major international project focusing on Norway and Scotland .He leads the UCD Hunter-Gatherer Research Group. He has a special  interest in the hunter-gatherer use of mountain landscapes, with a major research project in Scotland focusing on Mesolithic lives in the Cairngorms.