| The communities of the Irish Iron Age are often referred to as 'invisible' due to their seeming absence from the archaeological record. Ceramics, so often associated with domestic activities, are not a part of the Irish Iron Age material culture. Burials and domestic settlements dating to the Iron Age exist, but they are the exception to the generally sparse archaeological record. In the absence of sufficient material culture and settlement patterns, other means of studying the people of the Iron Age must be considered.;Pollen, sampled from cores extracted from peat bogs, provide the means to reconstruct local vegetation and identify human impact and abandonment in the landscape. Examination of the pollen record from four bogs in the Midlands of Ireland show a pattern of low-intensity pastoralism, suggesting people lived in dispersed, likely mobile, communities during much of the Iron Age. The Iron Age records indicate a starkly different way of life than that of the preceding Bronze Age and succeeding Early Medieval Period.;Further, the use of scalar stress theory shows how the aggregation of pastoral communities affected decision-making and socio-political organization. In addition, the application of dual-processual theory and collective action theory to the Irish data illuminate the community dynamics present during the Iron Age and the important role that subsistence, settlement, and civic-ceremonial sites played in the changing socio-political organizational strategies utilized by communities in the Early, Developed, and Late Iron Age. Ultimately, the Iron Age was a period of heterarchical organization, with leaders vying for status as rulers during the Developed Iron Age. |
