Episode 1 Taisce Shean Uladh - Treasures of Ancient Ulster

BIRDSONG

TRANSLATION FROM GAELIC:

WIND GUSTS

MENACING MUSIC

BIRDSONG

This ceramic technology, this pottery-making technology,

came to Ireland probably around 3700 or 3800BC,

along with the first farming communities.

There had never been anything like it before in Ulster

and the rest of Ireland. And...

this first pot is sort of very typical of the first Neolithic pots.

It would have been built out of coils of clay,

which would have been then smoothed out -

polishing the exterior surface -

and then it would have been placed into a sort of a bonfire kiln.

This would have been quite a sophisticated object.

It would have been the equivalent of

the mobile phone, the fancy mobile phone or the iPad.

And it's the sort of stuff which would have been appropriate

to have been used to mark the status of an individual.

One of the things that really sets pots like this apart from

earlier archaeological artefacts, at least in an Irish context,

is the sort of ritual transformative power of fire.

It started as clay. It's been clay which has been shaped,

but then it's been put into a fire

and it's brought out to be something that resembles rock.

And this transformative change would have had

tremendous, magical, religious significance

for the people who made it.

They were able to do things which they could replicate,

and they got the same results every time.

You're seeing the first steps, tentative steps towards

what we would see as modern science and engineering in these pots.

If there is probably a single message, it's an idea of permanence.

These pots have lasted.

Ceramics last in the ground for an extremely long period of time.

And it shows how the Neolithic people

have moved to a new concept of time,

where time is linear and stretches out for ever in front of them.

As opposed to the hunter-gatherer,

who thinks in terms of the next season.

But the Neolithic farmer is beginning to think in terms of

the fertility of the land over many, many years or decades.

They're beginning to think of passing that land on to

their children, their grandchildren.

Just in that single aspect, but really important aspect,

of how they viewed time,

we are much, much closer to a farmer

of 5,000 years ago than that farmer was to his Mesolithic ancestor

100, 200 or 300 years before that.

WIND GUSTS

It's actually a passage tomb.

It was here some time before the Giant's Ring itself.

What you see today, of course,

is not the tomb as it was originally built

because there would have been a kerb of stones

around the outside, and that would have held in place

a large mound over the top.

So when you entered the passage, you really were going into the ground.

Well, here we are at the front of the passage tomb.

If you look over the side,

you see there's one large stone there,

-and another large stone here.

-Yes.

And on this side, there's another stone just here.

We've got one stone missing,

which could well be this one standing behind us here.

But this stone here has slipped. And if we lift this up

and plonk it down on top here -

so the front of it is resting on that capstone

and on these uprights -

we've got a short passage.

These stones, the ring, what's the relationship?

Well, clearly this megalith was very important to Neolithic people,

so important that it prompted them to come back 200 or 300 years later

to construct this enormous embankment around the site.

-Shall we have a look from the top?

-I'd love to.

These are farmers after all.

And farmers have got to till the land, they've got to sow crops,

they've got to harvest crops.

They had to do all these other things,

they've got to create their own living space.

So at some time during the year,

they must've been brought out of that labour,

that traditional labour, to construct things like this.

This is a major feat of organisation for the society at the time.

So there had to be a real figure of authority there.

Now, they could've been coerced into doing it,

or they could've felt that this was part of their religious observance,

or something, to construct these banks.

But either way, there was this figure of authority,

or figures of authority to organise these people.

Barrie, you spent ten years excavating here,

what was your most significant find?

We found a large, timber enclosure,

really substantial.

It was nearly 100m long, nearly 70m wide.

I mean, think about it,

you've got to cut down the trees.

So therefore you need axes to cut down the trees.

So you've got to make the axes.

Then you've got to drag those trees to the site.

And for that, you've got to have cord and ropes.

So ropes have to be made as well.

It was a massive effort to do this -

possibly 50-70,000 man-hours.

This site was really so substantial and so big,

you can think of it almost like a Neolithic cathedral.

And just as cathedrals in the past were designed to awe

and inspire,

so, I think, was this particular site.

What was in the centre of this important site

was a platform in which bodies were exposed -

a process which we call excarnation.

You can have this visual image of bodies being left to rot

for carrion birds coming down and pecking away at the flesh,

maybe taking away fingers and things like that.

But what you're left with after two or three months,

clean bones, which were then processed.

So it's that process of changing from

a recognisable but dead human being

into one which is unrecognisable, anonymous and an ancestor.