Long-term human impact and environmental change in mid-western Ireland, with particular reference to Céide Fields – an overview

This paper presents new palaeoecological data from north County Mayo (Co. Mayo), western Ireland, and reviews published data with a view to achieving a better understanding of the timing and nature of early farming in the region, its impact on the natural environment, and the factors, including climate change, that influenced mid- and late-Holocene vegetation dynamics and farming in the region. A long pollen profile from Glenulra, a deep basin situated within Céide Fields, and short profiles from blanket peat that overlies the prehistoric stone-wall field system provide unambiguous evidence for substantial farming, including widespread woodland clearance, in the early British and Irish Neolithic (beginning ca. 3800 BCE). This was followed by a distinct lull that lasted several centuries until farming activity resumed again, at first modestly (at ca. 2700 BCE) and then more markedly from 2350 BCE, i.e. at the Neolithic–Chalcolithic transition. It is argued on the basis of this and other palaeoecological evidence, including pollen analytical investigations at nearby Garrynagran, that, contrary to recent suggestions, there is no reason to doubt the widely held view that the stone-wall field system – unique in a western European Neolithic context – is correctly ascribable to the earlier part of the British and Irish Neolithic. The history of pine growing in bog contexts (mainly blanket bog) in the region is considered in the light of 14C dates derived from pine timbers, and the results of dendrochronological investigations at Garrynagran that have enabled two floating pine chronologies to be constructed, are presented. The climatic implications of these data are discussed within local and wider regional contexts.

Commemorating economic crisis at a liminal site: Memory, creativity and dissent at Achill Henge, Ireland

This paper draws on a case study of Achill Henge, County Mayo, Ireland, to examine the interplay between economic crisis, rebel creativity and shifting geographies of commemoration. Built in 2011 in a remote part of the west of Ireland, Achill Henge is a highly contested monument. Unfinished and under perennial threat of demolition, the Stonehenge-like structure was originally conceived as a ‘tomb of the Celtic Tiger’, in reference to Ireland’s ill-fated economic ‘miracle’ of the 1990s and 2000s. This paper examines this economic context before adopting two perspectives. Firstly, drawing on critical ideas about commemoration, we identify how the Henge remembers economic and political failure, materialising a unique site of subaltern memory. Situating it within memorial landscapes in Ireland, we explore how it can serve to critically analyse practices of traditional and contemporary commemoration. Secondly, we examine how its unsanctioned liminality produces a valuable, exemplary site at which numerous unregulated, playful, performative and political practices can be carried out, away from mainstream convention and commercial banality.

Isaac Nelson

This book reconsiders the career of an important, controversial, but neglected figure in this history of Irish Presbyterianism. The Revd Isaac Nelson is mostly remembered for his opposition to the evangelical revival of 1859, but this book demonstrates that there was much more to Nelson’s career. Nelson started out as a protégé of Henry Cooke and as an exemplary young evangelical minister. Upon aligning himself with the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society and joining forces with American abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, Nelson emerged as a powerful voice against compromise with slaveholders. One of the central objectives of this book is to show that anti-slavery, especially his involvement with the ‘Send Back the Money’ controversy in the Free Church of Scotland and the debate over fellowship with slaveholders at the Evangelical Alliance, was crucially important to the development of Nelson into one of Irish Presbyterianism’s most controversial figures. His later opposition to the 1859 Revival has often been understood as being indicative of Nelson’s opposition to evangelicalism. This book argues that such a conclusion is mistaken and that Nelson opposed the Revival as a Presbyterian evangelical. His later involvement with the Land League and the Irish Home Rule movement, including his tenure as the Member of Parliament for County Mayo, could be easily dismissed as an entirely discreditable affair. While avoiding romantic nostalgia in relation to Nelson’s nationalism, this book argues that Nelson’s basis for advocating Home Rule was not as peculiar as it might first appear.