MESOLITHIC PERIOD

The Middle Stone Age, between the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) and Neolithic periods.   The retreat of the ice-sheets northwards enabled people, still practising a Palaeolithic hunting and gathering way of life, to move northwards and to colonise for the first time before 6000 BC.  The Mesolithic period is characterized by coastal shell middens and by flint implement forms such as large blades, microliths and flint axes.   The period came to an end at around 4000 BC with the arrival of Neolithic techniques and settlers.

NEOLITHIC PERIOD

The New Stone Age which lasted from about 4000 BC to 2000 BC.  It's beginning was marked by the introduction of agriculture, presumably by waves of settlers from Britain and Europe, with the consequent rapid increase in population, forest clearance and an increasing pace of cultural change.   Pottery was used for the first time, new forms of specialised flint tools appear and great numbers of pollished stone axes, the most characteristic implement type of the period have been found.  Our earliest field monuments also date from the Neolithic period, for example Megalithic tombs an hilltop settlements, such as the large enclosures on Lyle's Hill (after which the most common pottery form is named) and Donegore Hill, both in South Antrim.

BRONZE AGE

The beginning of this period is marked at around 2000 BC by the appearance of a new type of pottery, the Beaker, and by the occurrence in graves of small copper objects, like daggers, awls and flat axes.  New burial rites such as the single-grave cist, supplanted  the megalithic tradition of collective burial and there was a rich variety of decorated pottery.  Gradually bronze tool and weapons became more plentiful and these are represented by many stray finds and in discoveries of large hoards.  Gold was used for the first time in making many types of dress ornament.   Not every aspect of culture changed at the same time and it must be presumed that there was considerable continuity in craft practices with the later Neolithic. 

IRON AGE

This is the most obscure period in Irish prehistory even though it was the most recent.   It is possible that horse-riding, wheeled transport and even Celtic language were introduced in the Iron Age.  It is difficult to decide exactly when, some time after 600 BC, the ability to make iron tools and weapons became widespread.  In the north of Ireland the Iron Age is represented by stray finds of objects decorated in a distinctive curvilinear art style, called la Tene, after a site in Switzerland.

Burials of the period are rare and settlements unknown.  The only field monuments we have are which are of Iron Age date are linear earthworks, probably made to mark or defend ancient boundaries or territories, and some ring-barrows.  Most of the little evidence we have comes from the first two centuries BC and the first century AD.   Apart from a few find of Roman objects virtually nothing is known about the period from the second century to the fifth century AD, which remains an embarrassing and puzzling archaeological dark age compared with the succeeding Early Christian Period.

EARLY CHRISTIAN PERIOD

A term applied in Ireland to the period from the establishment of Christianity in the 5th century to the coming of the Normans in the 1160's and 1170's.  Art history, however, sometimes recognizes a Viking Age starting around 800, giving way to Romanesque period at around 1050.  The term 'Early Historic' is sometimes also used.   Archaeologists' attempts to subdivide the period of terms of culture and settlement are hampered by poor dating evidence from excavations and the absence of pottery, apart from some early imports and the intractable souterrain wares of east Ulster.