Exploring the ‘somewhere’ and ‘someone’ else: an integrated approach to Ireland’s earliest farming practice

One of the great successes of Childe’s concept of the Neolithic Revolution was the emphasis it placed on the new – on a ‘package’ of related innovations in subsistence, technology and social relations as a rupture, a break, a new beginning. This is especially important given long-standing characterisations of hunting and gathering groups as unchanging over time and without historical agency or dynamism (Sassaman and Holly, 2011). Since Childe, the Neolithic revolution has been substantially unpacked, and in areas of primary domestication, we recognise that the process was long, variable and multi-faceted (e.g. Finlayson, 2013; Larsen et al., 2014).