Carleton Jones
Carleton Jones is a lecturer-above-the-bar in Archaeology at NUIG. Dr. Jones’s research is concerned with investigating the organization and dynamics of prehistoric societies in Ireland with a focus on the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age periods. To that end, he directed a long-term field project surveying and excavating on the Burren in western Ireland which was supported in part by the Heritage Council and the Royal Irish Academy.
Dr. Jones’s research takes an anthropological approach to the data and is particularly concerned with the inter-relatedness of aspects such as the scale of residential groups and patterns of settlement, the economic activities of communities, contact and exchange networks and mechanisms, the scale and focus of ritual activities including monument construction and use, the nature of status distinctions, and the linking of landscapes and identities. He also has research interests in geological and archaeological formation processes in karst landscapes and in links between past climate change and human behavior.
Dr. Jones received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1997, and his MA (1992) and BA (1986) from California State University Long Beach.
Dr. Jones’s research takes an anthropological approach to the data and is particularly concerned with the inter-relatedness of aspects such as the scale of residential groups and patterns of settlement, the economic activities of communities, contact and exchange networks and mechanisms, the scale and focus of ritual activities including monument construction and use, the nature of status distinctions, and the linking of landscapes and identities. He also has research interests in geological and archaeological formation processes in karst landscapes and in links between past climate change and human behavior.
Dr. Jones received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1997, and his MA (1992) and BA (1986) from California State University Long Beach.
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and the eastern Mediterranean where past climate shifts may have had more extreme effects and are likely to have left strong proxy signals. It is these same regions where early complex societies were located and the collapse or reorganization of these large complex societies can leave similarly strong traces in the archaeological record. In contrast, the present study is focused on the west coast of Ireland, an Atlantic island in a temperate oceanic climate region at a time when the societies living there are best described as small-scale segmentary societies. Geography therefore militated against the most extreme effects of climate change and there were no large complex societies to collapse; nevertheless there is evidence that climate change impacted these societies.
and described. These north Munster atypical court tombs
are related to the more common Irish megaliths known as
court tombs and also to monuments even farther afield, but
the north Munster megaliths are architecturally distinct and
geographically isolated. These north Munster atypical court
tombs are associated, at least in part, with the widespread
Carinated Bowl tradition of the Early Neolithic but north
Munster societies followed a trajectory distinct from other
regions as the Neolithic progressed. Compared to areas farther
to the north and east in Ireland where there is evidence
for dynamic social structures and consequent efforts to legitimate
and demonstrate social statuses, Neolithic north Munster
societies appear to have been smaller, more stable and
less open to innovations. The geography of Ireland appears to
have helped separate north Munster Neolithic societies from
regions with more dynamic demographic, social and ritual
milieus, but north Munster was not completely isolated. The
evidence from the excavated north Munster atypical court
tomb at Parknabinnia shows that some distant events may
well have influenced practices in the far west of Ireland.
to highlight the importance of ancestry in the history
and prehistory of Ireland. It is composed of a collage of
Irish faces and I want to thank everyone who contributed
photos for this purpose. The criterion was that the
individuals in the photos should have four Irish grandparents,
which means that the phenotypic traits displayed
in the faces, while not necessarily ancient, do have some
time depth. Is this significant? A common argument is
that the mathematics of ancestry proves that ancestry
doesn’t really matter. This argument suggests that, as we
all have four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen
great-great-grandparents, etc., by the time we go
back hundreds and thousands of years, when populations
were much smaller, we all have essentially the same
ancestry. This analysis is based on the assumption that
DNA is halved at each generation, but researchers have
now found that DNA is not neatly halved with each
new generation; instead, blocks of DNA are passed down
between generations relatively unchanged. This means
that some of your ancestors have contributed more to
your genome than others, and also that some of your
ancestors have not contributed to your genome at all
(Kenneally 2014; Wiuf and Hein 1997). Ancestry is,
therefore, more complicated than it might at first appear.
One thing that is apparent already is that the new
aDNA research cannot be ignored by archaeologists.
Archaeologists will have to adapt their interpretive frameworks
to incorporate these new data, and the resulting
theoretical shift may be as significant as the mid-twentieth-
century shift from cultural-historical to processual
interpretive frameworks which was brought about in
large part by the advent of radiocarbon dating (cf. Renfrew
1973). As the aDNA work advances and more
detailed relationships between and within past populations
are revealed it will no longer be sufficient to discuss
only large-scale processes or individual-scale experiences;
new interpretive frameworks will have to consider lineage-
scale ancestry as an important conduit of traditions,
and also as an important mechanism for change.
The Chalcolithic wedge tombs of Ireland represent a dramatic re-emergence of megalithism over a millennium after most Neolithic and Irish megaliths were built and many centuries after most had gone out of use. This resurgence of building monuments associated with the dead may well have been associated with a period of social instability caused by the expansion of exchange networks and associated with the introduction of metallurgy. Regional, group, and individual identities all seem to have undergone change at this time, probably in a dynamic demographic context. Variations in the distribution and scale of wedge tombs in Co. Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, provide an interesting study that may reveal a pattern of clan affiliations, status competition, and enduring links to an important and ancient locale.
Keywords: Chalcolithic, megalith, monument, status competition, identity, Ireland, landscape, wedge tomb
and the eastern Mediterranean where past climate shifts may have had more extreme effects and are likely to have left strong proxy signals. It is these same regions where early complex societies were located and the collapse or reorganization of these large complex societies can leave similarly strong traces in the archaeological record. In contrast, the present study is focused on the west coast of Ireland, an Atlantic island in a temperate oceanic climate region at a time when the societies living there are best described as small-scale segmentary societies. Geography therefore militated against the most extreme effects of climate change and there were no large complex societies to collapse; nevertheless there is evidence that climate change impacted these societies.
and described. These north Munster atypical court tombs
are related to the more common Irish megaliths known as
court tombs and also to monuments even farther afield, but
the north Munster megaliths are architecturally distinct and
geographically isolated. These north Munster atypical court
tombs are associated, at least in part, with the widespread
Carinated Bowl tradition of the Early Neolithic but north
Munster societies followed a trajectory distinct from other
regions as the Neolithic progressed. Compared to areas farther
to the north and east in Ireland where there is evidence
for dynamic social structures and consequent efforts to legitimate
and demonstrate social statuses, Neolithic north Munster
societies appear to have been smaller, more stable and
less open to innovations. The geography of Ireland appears to
have helped separate north Munster Neolithic societies from
regions with more dynamic demographic, social and ritual
milieus, but north Munster was not completely isolated. The
evidence from the excavated north Munster atypical court
tomb at Parknabinnia shows that some distant events may
well have influenced practices in the far west of Ireland.
to highlight the importance of ancestry in the history
and prehistory of Ireland. It is composed of a collage of
Irish faces and I want to thank everyone who contributed
photos for this purpose. The criterion was that the
individuals in the photos should have four Irish grandparents,
which means that the phenotypic traits displayed
in the faces, while not necessarily ancient, do have some
time depth. Is this significant? A common argument is
that the mathematics of ancestry proves that ancestry
doesn’t really matter. This argument suggests that, as we
all have four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen
great-great-grandparents, etc., by the time we go
back hundreds and thousands of years, when populations
were much smaller, we all have essentially the same
ancestry. This analysis is based on the assumption that
DNA is halved at each generation, but researchers have
now found that DNA is not neatly halved with each
new generation; instead, blocks of DNA are passed down
between generations relatively unchanged. This means
that some of your ancestors have contributed more to
your genome than others, and also that some of your
ancestors have not contributed to your genome at all
(Kenneally 2014; Wiuf and Hein 1997). Ancestry is,
therefore, more complicated than it might at first appear.
One thing that is apparent already is that the new
aDNA research cannot be ignored by archaeologists.
Archaeologists will have to adapt their interpretive frameworks
to incorporate these new data, and the resulting
theoretical shift may be as significant as the mid-twentieth-
century shift from cultural-historical to processual
interpretive frameworks which was brought about in
large part by the advent of radiocarbon dating (cf. Renfrew
1973). As the aDNA work advances and more
detailed relationships between and within past populations
are revealed it will no longer be sufficient to discuss
only large-scale processes or individual-scale experiences;
new interpretive frameworks will have to consider lineage-
scale ancestry as an important conduit of traditions,
and also as an important mechanism for change.
The Chalcolithic wedge tombs of Ireland represent a dramatic re-emergence of megalithism over a millennium after most Neolithic and Irish megaliths were built and many centuries after most had gone out of use. This resurgence of building monuments associated with the dead may well have been associated with a period of social instability caused by the expansion of exchange networks and associated with the introduction of metallurgy. Regional, group, and individual identities all seem to have undergone change at this time, probably in a dynamic demographic context. Variations in the distribution and scale of wedge tombs in Co. Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, provide an interesting study that may reveal a pattern of clan affiliations, status competition, and enduring links to an important and ancient locale.
Keywords: Chalcolithic, megalith, monument, status competition, identity, Ireland, landscape, wedge tomb
In 'Temples of Stone', the world of the megaliths and the megalith builders is brought to life in a fully illustrated, popular format. All the key sites in Ireland are discussed and over one hundred ‘Sites Worth Visiting’ are listed in the final chapter, with photographs, maps and detailed directions.
the context of past environmental and climatic
conditions have had a prominent role in archaeology
since the middle of the twentieth century, these recent
advances in the quantity and precision of both
palaeoclimatological and archaeological datasets are
ushering in a new era of research focused on human
responses to past climate change. This body of literature is expanding rapidly and three recent contributions are
reviewed here. Each of these books approaches the
fascinating question of how past humans and societies
responded to climate change from a very different
perspective. Climate change and the course of global
history—a rough journey by John Brooke is a wideranging
work starting with our pre-human and early
human ancestors and ending with a consideration of
future trajectories; 2200 BC—a climatic breakdown as a
cause for the collapse of the old world? by Herausgeber
Meller et al. is a conference proceedings volume
focused on analysing the effects of a single specific
climatic downturn on a range of contemporary
societies from western Europe to the Middle East; and,
finally, The remembered land—surviving sea-level rise after
the last ice age by Jim Leary is a post-processual ‘reimagination’
of what it may have been like for the
Mesolithic inhabitants of what is now the North Sea
to experience the drowning of their lived-in landscape
in the Early Holocene.
The project was helped through grants from The Irish Quaternary Society, The Royal Irish Academy and the fees of students attending the fieldschool. The aDNA work is being carried out Dan Bradley and Lara Cassidy at The Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin and the isotopes work by Rick Schulting at Oxford University.
Jones, C. 2015 Dating ancient field walls in karst landscapes using differential bedrock lowering. Geoarchaeology - an International Journal.