>From the NY Times A Pompeii in Slow Motion By MEGAN HARLAN N the boggy coastal moors of County Mayo in northwest Ireland lies one of the largest Stone Age sites in the world — though it might not seem obvious at first glance. It isn't that Ceide Fields, a sprawling Neolithic community of farms, houses and tombs, has been destroyed or dismantled in the 5,500 years since it was built. In fact, much of the ancient, enclosed settlement has been perfectly preserved, thanks to the bog that began to encroach some five millenniums ago and slowly enveloped every structure. The site's lead archaeologist, Seamus Caulfield, of University College, Dublin, has likened this phenomenon to "a slow-motion Pompeii." While the bog's sudden and inexorable expansion forced Ceide Fields' residents to move away, it also kept a good number of the buildings and objects they used safely submerged beneath what is today a seven-foot layer of marshy earth. The Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney evoked the discovery of North Mayo's buried archaeological treasures in his 1975 poem "Belderg": "When he stripped off blanket bog/ the soft-piled centuries/ fell open . . ." Heaney wrote the poem after an inspiring visit with the local schoolteacher Patrick Caulfield, the father of the archaeologist Seamus Caulfield. In the 1930's the elder Caulfield realized that his neighbors, while cutting and drying bog turf into peat (Ireland's traditional fuel), were hitting deep-lying, patterned walls of stones. He rightly surmised that these walls had to be many thousands of years old, since it would have taken that long for such thick bog to accumulate. Though only a fraction of the site's five square miles has been thoroughly excavated since work began in 1969, the entire area is open to visitors, and from March through November archaeologists and doctoral students lead tours of numerous fascinating finds. For those of us harboring latent fantasies of a career in archaeology — and I'll cheerfully admit, I do — Ceide Fields is a bewitching place, full of tantalizing clues about humanity's prehistoric past. On the morning last August when I drove the 20 miles northwest to Ceide Fields from my hotel in Ballina, a bustling city in the heart of County Mayo, I passed through the Moy River Valley, with its quintessentially Irish countryside of peridot green pastures dotted with cottages and churches, and, farther on, the variegated Victorian storefronts of tiny Ballycastle town. But as I headed west along Mayo's North Coast Road, the landscape suddenly grew dramatic. The road runs for about five miles alongside the spectacularly serrated Ceide Cliffs, with their countless horizontal strata of limestone and shale rising some 370 feet — all in all resembling a huge layer cake cut in jagged slices. Meanwhile, to my left, the lush meadows of Mayo's interior had given way to an empty, khaki-colored expanse of bog. Called blanket bog for good reason, these boglands cover hundreds of soggy, unfarm able square miles in northwest Mayo, which helps explain why the region is Ireland's least populous. With its high sloping, treeless hills, this desolate landscape resembled a desert — one made of sodden soil instead of sand. But something glistened in the distance. Ceide means flat-topped hill in Gaelic (and, trickily, is pronounced "Cajun" without the "n"), and as I approached this vast hill, a glint of angled glass reflected in the sun, like a prism catching light. This was the Ceide Fields Interpretive Center, a sparkling glass-and-stone pyramid at the hill's coastal base. As if on cue, the changeable sky, which had undulated between blue and pewter, displayed a rainbow arching over the pyramid to the Atlantic Ocean. Rising some 60 feet high, the Interpretive Center won Ireland's Building of the Year Award when it opened in 1993. It is a handsome three-leveled edifice, the bottom third sided with bog turf, so that the building appears to have sprouted naturally from the ground. Gray-green limestone slabs, the same stone found in Ceide Cliffs, front the middle section. And the towering apex is composed of glass walls supported by stainless-steel beams. Designed by Mary McKenna at Ireland's Office of Public Works, these architectural elements are at once harmonious with the environment and in striking contrast to it. The pyramid's loftlike, oak-and-sandstone interior is just as stylish. The main floor houses crisp exhibitions on the archaeology and botany of Ceide Fields; a sleek, 75-seat theater screening a short documentary on the region; and a pleasant cafe, serving soups, sandwiches and pastries. The statuesque centerpiece is a 15-foot section of copper-colored 4,500-year-old Scotch pine retrieved from a nearby bog. A second-story gallery contains exhibitions on local geology, while the glassed-in third floor consists entirely of a platform for viewing the fields, cliffs and ocean. The center provides a much-needed window onto the landscape's often enigmatic patterns of ruins — and a much-needed shelter from northwest Mayo's frequent rainstorms. But since an hourlong tour of the excavations was about to begin, I put off exploring it, eager to get outside into the sunlight that now streamed through the glass apex. The tour guide, Dredagh O'Connor, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh and a native of Ballycastle, ushered our small group out the back entrance and up a wooden staircase ascending Ceide hill. Gravel pathways snaked through the grassy boglands, which, up close, reveal purple heathers and sprays of spotted yellow orchids. The tour follows one such pathway around the boundary of a five-acre field once inhabited by a Neolithic family. As she led us across olive green moors stretching south to the horizon, Ms. O'Connor explained the extent of what we were looking at. Ceide Fields encompasses hundreds of individual, interlinked Stone Age farms once inhabited by as many as 1,000 people. These homesteads were surprisingly well organized. Sets of parallel field walls, over a mile long, run inland from the coast. Perpendicular dividing walls crisscross these longer walls into neat, rectangular plots of anywhere from 5 to 17 acres. Each plot provided just enough room to sustain an extended family of cattle herders and wheat farmers. While some sandstone walls have been excavated, most remain buried in a secondary, subterranean landscape. To find these underground walls, archaeologists have borrowed the traditional method of local farmers to dig for trees buried beneath the bog: long iron probes are thrust into the bog; if they strike something hard, a whitewashed bamboo rod is inserted into the probe's hollow center and left as a marker indicating the existence of a wall or a tree. Thus much of what visitors see at Ceide Fields are these bamboo poles delineating the ancient field wall system — which somewhat resemble an enormous game of connect-the-dots. And the center and tour help connect these dots with intriguing evidence about prehistoric life. Our first stop was at an ancient animal pen, a small oval enclosure attached to an excavated field wall. The Neolithic settlers of Ceide arrived in longboats — probably from France or Scotland — and introduced to Ireland livestock like cattle and sheep. This meant they would have spun wool for fabrics — so that their fashion sense might have looked revolutionary indeed to Ireland's indigenous Mesolithic people, nomadic fisherman and hunters who probably swathed themselves in animal skins. As the sky grew overcast, we hiked another 30 yards to the remains of the 5,500-year-old Behy house, the base of a round hut measuring 20 feet in diameter. Ms. O'Connor told us that the Behy house was abandoned before the Egyptian pyramids were even built. The simple structure yielded key domestic implements like shouldered pottery, leaf-shaped arrowheads, a stone ax and, most important, a stone plow blade, models and drawings of which can be seen in the visitor center. Along with animal husbandry, the Ceide settlers brought with them another giant leap forward for mankind from continental Europe — cultivation of grains. This portrait of an orderly agrarian society undercuts most previous theories about human life during the Neolithic era. Farming was thought to be a much more haphazard affair, because at other Neolithic sites, vestiges of original, systematic plans of settlement have been destroyed or rearranged — for example, the stone walls dismantled and used for new walls. But Ceide Fields is unique for being so perfectly intact — and looking about as methodically laid out as any modern suburban subdivision. More extraordinary still is that Ceide Fields has no defensive walls. Since the people lived in a dispersed, unfortified community, they apparently did not fear attacks, either by local or foreign invaders. So much for visions of warring Stone Age barbarians: this group, anyway, seems to have lived peaceful, rather idyllic lives. As we headed back to the center, an Atlantic squall swept through, ripping against the sturdy golf umbrellas Ms. O'Connor had quickly run to fetch for the group. She shouted apologies for the storm above the winds, but also pointed out that if it hadn't been for the rain, the bogs would never have grown — and Ceide's artifacts probably wouldn't have survived. A bog is 90 percent water, its soil so saturated that when the grasses and heathers that grow on its surface die, they don't fully decay but accumulate in layers. At least 175 days of rain a year are required for this to happen; North Mayo gets an average of 225 days. But Ceide's residents may have played a key role in the bog's devastating growth. To provide fuel, timber and space, they clear-cut the primeval oak and pine forests, thereby directly exposing the soil to persistent rainfall. A climate change more than 5,000 years ago — when the temperature abruptly dropped five degrees, causing more rain — may have also been to blame, Either way, the people of Ceide probably moved no farther than to neighboring settlements at Ballycastle. Soaked through, our tour group retreated to the center to grab warming cups of coffee and explore the exhibitions. The most impressive diorama is a scale model of the Ballyglass house, excavated on private land on the eastern border of Ceide Fields, about three miles from the center. The foundation of the house was discovered beneath a megalithic tomb typical of the region: a cairn with two galleries contained cremated human remains, and opened onto a circular standing stone courtyard. But the Ballyglass house struck me as a more poignant glimpse of prehistory. About 40 feet long and 20 feet wide, it had a large central room, two small chambers, a high- pitched ceiling and an indoor hearth, and was probably roofed with thatch. It is, in other words, strikingly similar to the traditional thatched cottages so common in contemporary rural Ireland. I climbed spiral stairs to the viewing platform in the apex, where rain thrashed against the glass walls, and gazed at the windswept fields outside. Seamus Heaney called this "a landscape fossilized." And it was both eerie and comforting to imagine that the familiar Irish countryside of today — with its neat, rectangular cottages, low stone walls partitioning green pastures, and places of worship — might not have looked so very different in the Stone Age. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/08/travel/CEIDE.html?ex=995556453&ei=1& en=e4c9534bb4647410

Liz, What a wonderful piece. Thanks so much for sharing it. I have Forwarded it to 3 of my children who share my interests in these things . . . Best, Rosemary ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2001 8:51 AM Subject: [MAYO] Pompeii in slow motion > >From the NY Times > > A Pompeii in Slow Motion > > By MEGAN HARLAN > > N the boggy coastal moors of County Mayo in northwest Ireland lies > one of the largest Stone Age sites in the world — though it might > not seem obvious at first glance. > It isn't that Ceide Fields, a sprawling Neolithic community of > farms, houses and tombs, has been destroyed or dismantled in the > 5,500 years since it was built. In fact, much of the ancient, > enclosed settlement has been perfectly preserved, thanks to the bog > that began to encroach some five millenniums ago and slowly > enveloped every structure. > The site's lead archaeologist, Seamus Caulfield, of University > College, Dublin, has likened this phenomenon to "a slow-motion > Pompeii." While the bog's sudden and inexorable expansion forced > Ceide Fields' residents to move away, it also kept a good number of > the buildings and objects they used safely submerged beneath what > is today a seven-foot layer of marshy earth. > The Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney evoked the > discovery of North Mayo's buried archaeological treasures in his > 1975 poem "Belderg": "When he stripped off blanket bog/ the > soft-piled centuries/ fell open . . ." Heaney wrote the poem after > an inspiring visit with the local schoolteacher Patrick Caulfield, > the father of the archaeologist Seamus Caulfield. In the 1930's the > elder Caulfield realized that his neighbors, while cutting and > drying bog turf into peat (Ireland's traditional fuel), were > hitting deep-lying, patterned walls of stones. He rightly surmised > that these walls had to be many thousands of years old, since it > would have taken that long for such thick bog to accumulate. > Though only a fraction of the site's five square miles has been > thoroughly excavated since work began in 1969, the entire area is > open to visitors, and from March through November archaeologists > and doctoral students lead tours of numerous fascinating finds. For > those of us harboring latent fantasies of a career in archaeology — > and I'll cheerfully admit, I do — Ceide Fields is a bewitching > place, full of tantalizing clues about humanity's prehistoric past. > On the morning last August when I drove the 20 miles northwest to > Ceide Fields from my hotel in Ballina, a bustling city in the heart > of County Mayo, I passed through the Moy River Valley, with its > quintessentially Irish countryside of peridot green pastures dotted > with cottages and churches, and, farther on, the variegated > Victorian storefronts of tiny Ballycastle town. > But as I headed west along Mayo's North Coast Road, the landscape > suddenly grew dramatic. The road runs for about five miles > alongside the spectacularly serrated Ceide Cliffs, with their > countless horizontal strata of limestone and shale rising some 370 > feet — all in all resembling a huge layer cake cut in jagged > slices. Meanwhile, to my left, the lush meadows of Mayo's interior > had given way to an empty, khaki-colored expanse of bog. > Called blanket bog for good reason, these boglands cover hundreds > of soggy, unfarm able square miles in northwest Mayo, which helps > explain why the region is Ireland's least populous. With its high > sloping, treeless hills, this desolate landscape resembled a desert > — one made of sodden soil instead of sand. > But something glistened in the distance. Ceide means flat-topped > hill in Gaelic (and, trickily, is pronounced "Cajun" without the > "n"), and as I approached this vast hill, a glint of angled glass > reflected in the sun, like a prism catching light. This was the > Ceide Fields Interpretive Center, a sparkling glass-and-stone > pyramid at the hill's coastal base. As if on cue, the changeable > sky, which had undulated between blue and pewter, displayed a > rainbow arching over the pyramid to the Atlantic Ocean. > Rising some 60 feet high, the Interpretive Center won Ireland's > Building of the Year Award when it opened in 1993. It is a handsome > three-leveled edifice, the bottom third sided with bog turf, so > that the building appears to have sprouted naturally from the > ground. Gray-green limestone slabs, the same stone found in Ceide > Cliffs, front the middle section. And the towering apex is composed > of glass walls supported by stainless-steel beams. Designed by Mary > McKenna at Ireland's Office of Public Works, these architectural > elements are at once harmonious with the environment and in > striking contrast to it. > The pyramid's loftlike, oak-and-sandstone interior is just as > stylish. The main floor houses crisp exhibitions on the archaeology > and botany of Ceide Fields; a sleek, 75-seat theater screening a > short documentary on the region; and a pleasant cafe, serving > soups, sandwiches and pastries. The statuesque centerpiece is a > 15-foot section of copper-colored 4,500-year-old Scotch pine > retrieved from a nearby bog. A second-story gallery contains > exhibitions on local geology, while the glassed-in third floor > consists entirely of a platform for viewing the fields, cliffs and > ocean. > The center provides a much-needed window onto the landscape's > often enigmatic patterns of ruins — and a much-needed shelter from > northwest Mayo's frequent rainstorms. But since an hourlong tour of > the excavations was about to begin, I put off exploring it, eager > to get outside into the sunlight that now streamed through the > glass apex. > The tour guide, Dredagh O'Connor, a doctoral student at the > University of Edinburgh and a native of Ballycastle, ushered our > small group out the back entrance and up a wooden staircase > ascending Ceide hill. Gravel pathways snaked through the grassy > boglands, which, up close, reveal purple heathers and sprays of > spotted yellow orchids. The tour follows one such pathway around > the boundary of a five-acre field once inhabited by a Neolithic > family. As she led us across olive green moors stretching south to > the horizon, Ms. O'Connor explained the extent of what we were > looking at. > Ceide Fields encompasses hundreds of individual, interlinked Stone > Age farms once inhabited by as many as 1,000 people. These > homesteads were surprisingly well organized. Sets of parallel field > walls, over a mile long, run inland from the coast. Perpendicular > dividing walls crisscross these longer walls into neat, rectangular > plots of anywhere from 5 to 17 acres. Each plot provided just > enough room to sustain an extended family of cattle herders and > wheat farmers. > While some sandstone walls have been excavated, most remain buried > in a secondary, subterranean landscape. To find these underground > walls, archaeologists have borrowed the traditional method of local > farmers to dig for trees buried beneath the bog: long iron probes > are thrust into the bog; if they strike something hard, a > whitewashed bamboo rod is inserted into the probe's hollow center > and left as a marker indicating the existence of a wall or a tree. > Thus much of what visitors see at Ceide Fields are these bamboo > poles delineating the ancient field wall system — which somewhat > resemble an enormous game of connect-the-dots. And the center and > tour help connect these dots with intriguing evidence about > prehistoric life. > Our first stop was at an ancient animal pen, a small oval > enclosure attached to an excavated field wall. The Neolithic > settlers of Ceide arrived in longboats — probably from France or > Scotland — and introduced to Ireland livestock like cattle and > sheep. This meant they would have spun wool for fabrics — so that > their fashion sense might have looked revolutionary indeed to > Ireland's indigenous Mesolithic people, nomadic fisherman and > hunters who probably swathed themselves in animal skins. > As the sky grew overcast, we hiked another 30 yards to the remains > of the 5,500-year-old Behy house, the base of a round hut measuring > 20 feet in diameter. Ms. O'Connor told us that the Behy house was > abandoned before the Egyptian pyramids were even built. The simple > structure yielded key domestic implements like shouldered pottery, > leaf-shaped arrowheads, a stone ax and, most important, a stone > plow blade, models and drawings of which can be seen in the visitor > center. Along with animal husbandry, the Ceide settlers brought > with them another giant leap forward for mankind from continental > Europe — cultivation of grains. > This portrait of an orderly agrarian society undercuts most > previous theories about human life during the Neolithic era. > Farming was thought to be a much more haphazard affair, because at > other Neolithic sites, vestiges of original, systematic plans of > settlement have been destroyed or rearranged — for example, the > stone walls dismantled and used for new walls. But Ceide Fields is > unique for being so perfectly intact — and looking about as > methodically laid out as any modern suburban subdivision. > More extraordinary still is that Ceide Fields has no defensive > walls. Since the people lived in a dispersed, unfortified > community, they apparently did not fear attacks, either by local or > foreign invaders. So much for visions of warring Stone Age > barbarians: this group, anyway, seems to have lived peaceful, > rather idyllic lives. > As we headed back to the center, an Atlantic squall swept through, > ripping against the sturdy golf umbrellas Ms. O'Connor had quickly > run to fetch for the group. She shouted apologies for the storm > above the winds, but also pointed out that if it hadn't been for > the rain, the bogs would never have grown — and Ceide's artifacts > probably wouldn't have survived. > A bog is 90 percent water, its soil so saturated that when the > grasses and heathers that grow on its surface die, they don't fully > decay but accumulate in layers. At least 175 days of rain a year > are required for this to happen; North Mayo gets an average of 225 > days. > But Ceide's residents may have played a key role in the bog's > devastating growth. To provide fuel, timber and space, they > clear-cut the primeval oak and pine forests, thereby directly > exposing the soil to persistent rainfall. > A climate change more than 5,000 years ago — when the temperature > abruptly dropped five degrees, causing more rain — may have also > been to blame, Either way, the people of Ceide probably moved no > farther than to neighboring settlements at Ballycastle. > Soaked through, our tour group retreated to the center to grab > warming cups of coffee and explore the exhibitions. The most > impressive diorama is a scale model of the Ballyglass house, > excavated on private land on the eastern border of Ceide Fields, > about three miles from the center. The foundation of the house was > discovered beneath a megalithic tomb typical of the region: a cairn > with two galleries contained cremated human remains, and opened > onto a circular standing stone courtyard. > But the Ballyglass house struck me as a more poignant glimpse of > prehistory. About 40 feet long and 20 feet wide, it had a large > central room, two small chambers, a high- pitched ceiling and an > indoor hearth, and was probably roofed with thatch. It is, in other > words, strikingly similar to the traditional thatched cottages so > common in contemporary rural Ireland. > I climbed spiral stairs to the viewing platform in the apex, where > rain thrashed against the glass walls, and gazed at the windswept > fields outside. Seamus Heaney called this "a landscape fossilized." > And it was both eerie and comforting to imagine that the familiar > Irish countryside of today — with its neat, rectangular cottages, > low stone walls partitioning green pastures, and places of worship > — might not have looked so very different in the Stone Age. > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/08/travel/CEIDE.html?ex=995556453&ei=1& > en=e4c9534bb4647410 > > > > ============================== > Create a FREE family website at MyFamily.com! > http://www.myfamily.com/banner.asp?ID=RWLIST2 >

I have claimed the people who came ashore 5,000 years ago from some unknown place. There was nothing dramatic which sent them away, just the bog moving in and covering everything. They lived and farmed the land for several centuries, then just wandered down the road. I guess they didn't go far as my MULDERIGs and CLARKEs are still in Mayo. Because I can't get any further back with them than the Famine, it's as good a story as any for and answer to "where did we come from?". Ellen "Rosemary R." wrote: > > Liz, > > What a wonderful piece. Thanks so much for sharing it. I have Forwarded it > to 3 of my children who share my interests in these things . . . > > Best, Rosemary > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2001 8:51 AM > Subject: [MAYO] Pompeii in slow motion > > > >From the NY Times > > > > A Pompeii in Slow Motion > > > > By MEGAN HARLAN > > > > N the boggy coastal moors of County Mayo in northwest Ireland lies > > one of the largest Stone Age sites in the world — though it might > > not seem obvious at first glance. > > It isn't that Ceide Fields, a sprawling Neolithic community of > > farms, houses and tombs, has been destroyed or dismantled in the > > 5,500 years since it was built. In fact, much of the ancient, > > enclosed settlement has been perfectly preserved, thanks to the bog > > that began to encroach some five millenniums ago and slowly > > enveloped every structure. > > The site's lead archaeologist, Seamus Caulfield, of University > > College, Dublin, has likened this phenomenon to "a slow-motion > > Pompeii." While the bog's sudden and inexorable expansion forced > > Ceide Fields' residents to move away, it also kept a good number of > > the buildings and objects they used safely submerged beneath what > > is today a seven-foot layer of marshy earth. > > The Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney evoked the > > discovery of North Mayo's buried archaeological treasures in his > > 1975 poem "Belderg": "When he stripped off blanket bog/ the > > soft-piled centuries/ fell open . . ." Heaney wrote the poem after > > an inspiring visit with the local schoolteacher Patrick Caulfield, > > the father of the archaeologist Seamus Caulfield. In the 1930's the > > elder Caulfield realized that his neighbors, while cutting and > > drying bog turf into peat (Ireland's traditional fuel), were > > hitting deep-lying, patterned walls of stones. He rightly surmised > > that these walls had to be many thousands of years old, since it > > would have taken that long for such thick bog to accumulate. > > Though only a fraction of the site's five square miles has been > > thoroughly excavated since work began in 1969, the entire area is > > open to visitors, and from March through November archaeologists > > and doctoral students lead tours of numerous fascinating finds. For > > those of us harboring latent fantasies of a career in archaeology — > > and I'll cheerfully admit, I do — Ceide Fields is a bewitching > > place, full of tantalizing clues about humanity's prehistoric past. > > On the morning last August when I drove the 20 miles northwest to > > Ceide Fields from my hotel in Ballina, a bustling city in the heart > > of County Mayo, I passed through the Moy River Valley, with its > > quintessentially Irish countryside of peridot green pastures dotted > > with cottages and churches, and, farther on, the variegated > > Victorian storefronts of tiny Ballycastle town. > > But as I headed west along Mayo's North Coast Road, the landscape > > suddenly grew dramatic. The road runs for about five miles > > alongside the spectacularly serrated Ceide Cliffs, with their > > countless horizontal strata of limestone and shale rising some 370 > > feet — all in all resembling a huge layer cake cut in jagged > > slices. Meanwhile, to my left, the lush meadows of Mayo's interior > > had given way to an empty, khaki-colored expanse of bog. > > Called blanket bog for good reason, these boglands cover hundreds > > of soggy, unfarm able square miles in northwest Mayo, which helps > > explain why the region is Ireland's least populous. With its high > > sloping, treeless hills, this desolate landscape resembled a desert > > — one made of sodden soil instead of sand. > > But something glistened in the distance. Ceide means flat-topped > > hill in Gaelic (and, trickily, is pronounced "Cajun" without the > > "n"), and as I approached this vast hill, a glint of angled glass > > reflected in the sun, like a prism catching light. This was the > > Ceide Fields Interpretive Center, a sparkling glass-and-stone > > pyramid at the hill's coastal base. As if on cue, the changeable > > sky, which had undulated between blue and pewter, displayed a > > rainbow arching over the pyramid to the Atlantic Ocean. > > Rising some 60 feet high, the Interpretive Center won Ireland's > > Building of the Year Award when it opened in 1993. It is a handsome > > three-leveled edifice, the bottom third sided with bog turf, so > > that the building appears to have sprouted naturally from the > > ground. Gray-green limestone slabs, the same stone found in Ceide > > Cliffs, front the middle section. And the towering apex is composed > > of glass walls supported by stainless-steel beams. Designed by Mary > > McKenna at Ireland's Office of Public Works, these architectural > > elements are at once harmonious with the environment and in > > striking contrast to it. > > The pyramid's loftlike, oak-and-sandstone interior is just as > > stylish. The main floor houses crisp exhibitions on the archaeology > > and botany of Ceide Fields; a sleek, 75-seat theater screening a > > short documentary on the region; and a pleasant cafe, serving > > soups, sandwiches and pastries. The statuesque centerpiece is a > > 15-foot section of copper-colored 4,500-year-old Scotch pine > > retrieved from a nearby bog. A second-story gallery contains > > exhibitions on local geology, while the glassed-in third floor > > consists entirely of a platform for viewing the fields, cliffs and > > ocean. > > The center provides a much-needed window onto the landscape's > > often enigmatic patterns of ruins — and a much-needed shelter from > > northwest Mayo's frequent rainstorms. But since an hourlong tour of > > the excavations was about to begin, I put off exploring it, eager > > to get outside into the sunlight that now streamed through the > > glass apex. > > The tour guide, Dredagh O'Connor, a doctoral student at the > > University of Edinburgh and a native of Ballycastle, ushered our > > small group out the back entrance and up a wooden staircase > > ascending Ceide hill. Gravel pathways snaked through the grassy > > boglands, which, up close, reveal purple heathers and sprays of > > spotted yellow orchids. The tour follows one such pathway around > > the boundary of a five-acre field once inhabited by a Neolithic > > family. As she led us across olive green moors stretching south to > > the horizon, Ms. O'Connor explained the extent of what we were > > looking at. > > Ceide Fields encompasses hundreds of individual, interlinked Stone > > Age farms once inhabited by as many as 1,000 people. These > > homesteads were surprisingly well organized. Sets of parallel field > > walls, over a mile long, run inland from the coast. Perpendicular > > dividing walls crisscross these longer walls into neat, rectangular > > plots of anywhere from 5 to 17 acres. Each plot provided just > > enough room to sustain an extended family of cattle herders and > > wheat farmers. > > While some sandstone walls have been excavated, most remain buried > > in a secondary, subterranean landscape. To find these underground > > walls, archaeologists have borrowed the traditional method of local > > farmers to dig for trees buried beneath the bog: long iron probes > > are thrust into the bog; if they strike something hard, a > > whitewashed bamboo rod is inserted into the probe's hollow center > > and left as a marker indicating the existence of a wall or a tree. > > Thus much of what visitors see at Ceide Fields are these bamboo > > poles delineating the ancient field wall system — which somewhat > > resemble an enormous game of connect-the-dots. And the center and > > tour help connect these dots with intriguing evidence about > > prehistoric life. > > Our first stop was at an ancient animal pen, a small oval > > enclosure attached to an excavated field wall. The Neolithic > > settlers of Ceide arrived in longboats — probably from France or > > Scotland — and introduced to Ireland livestock like cattle and > > sheep. This meant they would have spun wool for fabrics — so that > > their fashion sense might have looked revolutionary indeed to > > Ireland's indigenous Mesolithic people, nomadic fisherman and > > hunters who probably swathed themselves in animal skins. > > As the sky grew overcast, we hiked another 30 yards to the remains > > of the 5,500-year-old Behy house, the base of a round hut measuring > > 20 feet in diameter. Ms. O'Connor told us that the Behy house was > > abandoned before the Egyptian pyramids were even built. The simple > > structure yielded key domestic implements like shouldered pottery, > > leaf-shaped arrowheads, a stone ax and, most important, a stone > > plow blade, models and drawings of which can be seen in the visitor > > center. Along with animal husbandry, the Ceide settlers brought > > with them another giant leap forward for mankind from continental > > Europe — cultivation of grains. > > This portrait of an orderly agrarian society undercuts most > > previous theories about human life during the Neolithic era. > > Farming was thought to be a much more haphazard affair, because at > > other Neolithic sites, vestiges of original, systematic plans of > > settlement have been destroyed or rearranged — for example, the > > stone walls dismantled and used for new walls. But Ceide Fields is > > unique for being so perfectly intact — and looking about as > > methodically laid out as any modern suburban subdivision. > > More extraordinary still is that Ceide Fields has no defensive > > walls. Since the people lived in a dispersed, unfortified > > community, they apparently did not fear attacks, either by local or > > foreign invaders. So much for visions of warring Stone Age > > barbarians: this group, anyway, seems to have lived peaceful, > > rather idyllic lives. > > As we headed back to the center, an Atlantic squall swept through, > > ripping against the sturdy golf umbrellas Ms. O'Connor had quickly > > run to fetch for the group. She shouted apologies for the storm > > above the winds, but also pointed out that if it hadn't been for > > the rain, the bogs would never have grown — and Ceide's artifacts > > probably wouldn't have survived. > > A bog is 90 percent water, its soil so saturated that when the > > grasses and heathers that grow on its surface die, they don't fully > > decay but accumulate in layers. At least 175 days of rain a year > > are required for this to happen; North Mayo gets an average of 225 > > days. > > But Ceide's residents may have played a key role in the bog's > > devastating growth. To provide fuel, timber and space, they > > clear-cut the primeval oak and pine forests, thereby directly > > exposing the soil to persistent rainfall. > > A climate change more than 5,000 years ago — when the temperature > > abruptly dropped five degrees, causing more rain — may have also > > been to blame, Either way, the people of Ceide probably moved no > > farther than to neighboring settlements at Ballycastle. > > Soaked through, our tour group retreated to the center to grab > > warming cups of coffee and explore the exhibitions. The most > > impressive diorama is a scale model of the Ballyglass house, > > excavated on private land on the eastern border of Ceide Fields, > > about three miles from the center. The foundation of the house was > > discovered beneath a megalithic tomb typical of the region: a cairn > > with two galleries contained cremated human remains, and opened > > onto a circular standing stone courtyard. > > But the Ballyglass house struck me as a more poignant glimpse of > > prehistory. About 40 feet long and 20 feet wide, it had a large > > central room, two small chambers, a high- pitched ceiling and an > > indoor hearth, and was probably roofed with thatch. It is, in other > > words, strikingly similar to the traditional thatched cottages so > > common in contemporary rural Ireland. > > I climbed spiral stairs to the viewing platform in the apex, where > > rain thrashed against the glass walls, and gazed at the windswept > > fields outside. Seamus Heaney called this "a landscape fossilized." > > And it was both eerie and comforting to imagine that the familiar > > Irish countryside of today — with its neat, rectangular cottages, > > low stone walls partitioning green pastures, and places of worship > > — might not have looked so very different in the Stone Age. > > > > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/08/travel/CEIDE.html?ex=995556453&ei=1& > > en=e4c9534bb4647410 > > > > > > > > ============================== > > Create a FREE family website at MyFamily.com! > > http://www.myfamily.com/banner.asp?ID=RWLIST2 > > > > ============================== > Search over 1 Billion names at Ancestry.com! > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/rwlist1.asp