Woman of the Burren

ONE OF IRELAND’S EARLIEST FARMERS
(CIRCA 3600 BC)

As an elder, she would have been a source of knowledge that was highly regarded. She would have known the social and cultural environment, known where the best foraging grounds were and she would have remembered the lore and history of the past.

Dr Barra O’Donnabhain

If she were alive today, the Woman of the Burren – let’s call her that after the place she was found – would look most like a woman from modern-day Sardinia. Analysis of her DNA tells us that. The same scientific data suggests that she wasn’t very tall, genetically speaking, at least, but she was certainly strong and exceptionally healthy. Her bones confirm that she lived to be at least 55 years old, several decades more than the average woman could expect to survive in the fourth millennium BC.

This robust elder also had a remarkable story to tell because she was among the first wave of farmers who swept into Ireland almost 6000 years ago. They brought with them agricultural techniques and a tradition of building conspicuous monuments for their dead. Sometime after they arrived in Co. Clare, most likely from northern France or Britain, they built a tomb that still looks imposing in the dramatic landscape of the Burren.

Poulnabrone portal tomb is one of the most photographed archaeological sites in Ireland today – a symbol of an ancient past that is so often embroidered with myth and supposition. Yet we know what really happened at this singular place: it is now possible to capture a snapshot of Ireland’s earliest farmers going about their daily business, thanks to the enlightening work of archaeologists and genetic researchers.

We can say, for example, that the Woman of the Burren looked nothing like the Irish population alive today. ‘If you want an idea of what this person would have been like, look at modern-day Sardinians,’ says Dr Lara Cassidy, a post-doctoral genetic researcher at Trinity College Dublin. ‘[They] are not completely the same, but genetically they are the most similar alive today.’

We can also say that this woman from the early Neolithic (or New Stone Age) was one of the first farmers who came in a mass migration of people into Ireland almost 6000 years ago. For decades, opinion was divided on how agriculture got here, but now there is evidence for significant movement into Ireland.

It’s interesting to recall the earliest Irish origin legends that traced the history of Ireland back to a series of ‘ancient invasions’. The word ‘invasion’ is too blunt, perhaps, as there is evidence that some of the newcomers mixed with those already here, yet there was conflict too, as excavations carried out under Dr Ann Lynch at Poulnabrone have shown.

Analysis of bones by archaeologists Dr Barra O’Donnabhain and Dr Mara Tesorieri (who, coincidentally, also has Sardinian connections) open an unrivalled window into life – and death – in the fourth millennium BC. One of those buried with the Woman of the Burren was struck from behind with such force that the tip of a projectile lodged in his or her hip. It’s not possible to say if the victim was male or female but the weapon, made of chert, penetrated the bone. The person died shortly afterwards, although probably not from this injury.

In any case, a new understanding of those interactions – violent or otherwise – is now emerging thanks to pioneering technology that is coaxing information from ancient DNA in a way that was never thought possible. Dr Cassidy, with collaboration from Queen’s University Belfast, the National Museum of Ireland and a number of Irish archaeologists, has succeeded in analysing DNA taken from