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The Southern Kintyre Project: Exploring interactions across the Irish Sea from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age. Vicki Cummings and Gary Robinson
BAR British Series 618 2015
Extract: Chapter 1. Social interactions in prehistory and the Southern Kintyre Project
This project was conceived a decade ago in response to a growing area of research in prehistoric studies. Vicki had been looking at Neolithic monuments either side of the Irish Sea, as well as thinking about movements by people in prehistory. Gary had researching movements by boat around the Scilly Isles alongside investigations of how people conceived the sea. Our two strands of research sat alongside other work on seascapes, movements on the sea and cultural interactions being investigated at the time (see chapter one). It therefore seemed timely to pool our different research interests and investigate some key research questions by investigating one region in detail. The main aim, as outlined in this volume, was thus to try and get a better sense of cultural interactions between communities in the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age through a detailed investigation of one particular area, with a focus on considerations of interactions across the sea.
Kintyre offered the perfect case study area. While still attached to the Scottish mainland, it is also surrounded on virtually all sides by the sea. Interactions in prehistory would have had the potential to be both by boat and by land. Indeed, Kintyre is the closest point on mainland Britain to Ireland, just 12 miles away, so there may have been interactions by boat with both other parts of Scotland as well as Ireland. However, very little archaeological research had been conducted in Kintyre prior to this project. A few high profile excavations of chambered cairns had taken place by Jack Scott (notably Beacharra and Brackley), and the odd tantalising find had been uncovered, such as the hoard of Antrim flint axes and flakes at Achinoan (Saville 1999).
The nature of social interactions between different communities in prehistory has been discussed by generations of scholars. From early considerations of the impact of movements of people bringing new innovations from overseas, to more nuanced considerations of a diverse range of interactions via the sea, exchange networks and kin relations, the exact nature of social interaction in prehistory still remains little explored. The Southern Kintyre Project was set up with the explicit aim of exploring this issue in more detail through the investigation of different types of material culture and architecture, from the Mesolithic through to the Bronze Age. As outlined above, this region has not seen extensive research over the years, but its vicinity to eastern Ireland and other areas of western Scotland made it an ideal case study for further investigation
Read more at: https://www.academia.edu/14436461/The_Southern_Kintyre_Project_Exploring_interactions_across_the_Irish_Sea_from_the_Mesolithic_to_the_Bronze_Age._Vicki_Cummings_and_Gary_Robinson
The full monograph is available from BAR http://www.barpublishing.com/the-southern-kintyre-project.html
See also PAST No. 55, from page 12 on
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prehistoric/past/past55.pdf
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