Celtic ornament vector free mysterious

Part of history…

At the start of the period Ireland had emerged from a mysterious decline that archaeological evidence suggests had hit population levels and standards of living from c. 100 BC to c. 300 AD, called the Irish Dark Age by Thomas Charles-Edwards. The population was entirely rural and dispersed, with small ring forts the largest centers of human occupation. Some 40,000 of these are known, while there may have been as many as 50,000, and “archaeologists are agreed that the vast bulk of them are the farm enclosures of the well-to-do of early medieval Ireland”. Souterrains, underground passages and chambers for hiding in or escaping through, are common. It is likely that raiding Britain for slaves and other loot gave an important boost to an otherwise almost entirely agricultural economy. The lakeside enclosures called crannogs continued to be used and seem especially associated with crafts.

  Celtic ornament vector free mysterious

 

The older view that early medieval Irish farming concentrated on livestock has been overturned by pollen studies and other evidence, and it is now clear that cereal farming was increasingly important from about 200 AD onwards, with barley and oats more important crops than rye, wheat and others. However cattle were greatly prized, and cattle-raiding constituted a large part of warfare, so that cattle needed the constant presence of a herdsman in daylight hours, and were put in an enclosure at night. By the end of the period the largest herds were probably those of monasteries. However, generally mild Irish winters seem to have meant they were never put in roofed shelters in winter, although young calves might spend a period in the house. There was very considerable clearance of forests in the early part of the period, such that by 800 large tracts of forest appear to have been rare, and the native Scots Pine cleared almost to extinction; the large areas of bogland were harder for the medieval Irish to affect.

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Celtic ornament vector free mysterious

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Celtic ornament vector free mysterious