-I think for early farmers, the notion of ancestry, that's really the central focus of this world. The monuments themselves contain selected bones of the ancestors. This is the world of the dead but it's capable of influencing the lives of the living, which of course is very much oriented around the farming cycle, the importance of the seasons. So, of course, you want to align your monuments to the critical points of the year. In the case of Newgrandge, on sunrise at the winter solstice. Newgrange is part of a sort of international Atlantic phenomenon of passage tomb building which takes us from Spain to southern Scandinavia.

 

-So they were conscious of being part of a wider human race, not just stuck on this island?

 

-Oh, very much so. Absolutely and I think these early farmers building this monument would have realized and would have probably had stories about places that were far away, how things worked in other areas.

 

Neither archaeology nor genetics can tell us the names of any of the tribes who settled in this early Ireland. 

 

But in the beautiful artifacts of the Bronze Age, we can see a culture shared with groups in Britain and Europe whom later historians would call the Celts.

 

-Tiny decorations. This lovely collar was worn for decorative reasons, one presumes. What does that tell you about the people who made it and about the times they lived in?

 

-Beyond being just decorative, they are actually a way of identifying particular people in society because no more than our own age, um, you know, I'm not decked out in diamonds and I'm hardly likely ever to be, but if I was at, you know, that particular level of society whether it's a question of wealth or position, then I would have needed a particular status in order to be entitled to wear these objects. And, of course, if I was male, I might have been entitled to wear a lunula.

 

-So we know there was a hierarchy by this stage.

 

-Yes, there definitely has to be a hierarchy.

 

-You also have here something which fascinated me when I heard about it because it comes so far away. And that's amber. And you go all the way to the Baltic to find them.

 

-Yes, amber really comes into its own in Ireland in the late Bronze Age. We're really lucky in this country because most of it has been buried in the peat bogs and as a result, it's extremely well-preserved.

 

-You've got some here.

 

-Yes. This is part of a necklace.

 

-How did it get here from the Baltic coast, from Poland or some other…