First Farmers

About 6,000 years ago a new wave of incomers arrived in Fermanagh. They were spearheading a revolution in the Stone Age way of life: they were the first farmers. These pioneer farmers journeyed from Britain and Europe carrying with them seed corn and domestic breeds of cattle, pig, sheep and goats – all they needed to establish a farming community. They found a densely wooded landscape – mature stands of hazel, oak elm and alder, and on the uplands, over 700 feet, pine.

^{Life in Neolithic times.Conjectural drawing by D. Warner.©Fermanagh County Museum.}

The soils laid down in the Ice Age had been enriched and deepened by the searching root systems of the trees of the mature woodland. The first farmers seem to have settled high up where the woodland was probably less dense but the soils still fertile.

They cleared the woodland, cutting down the trees and burning the stumps – ‘slash and burn’ farming – and used the wood to build their homesteads. Gradually, they imposed an order on the landscape, marking it out into fields with earthen banks and drystone walls. Like all pioneers, though, they adopted the lifestyle of their hunter-gatherer neighbours, fishing, hunting and collecting food.

The enduring legacy of these first farmers is their giant stone burial monuments – megalithic tombs. Today in these tombs we find, buried alongside the dead, sherds of pottery they used in their households.

^{Clearing forests, building field walls and preparing the soil for planting are all part of a day’s work for this Neolithic family. Diorama by Gordon Johnson.}
^{©Fermanagh County Museum.}

Through much of Ireland, four classes of tomb recur – court tombs, portal tombs, passage tombs and wedge tombs. All of these tomb classes are present in Fermanagh. The passage tombs – there is a concentration of them in the Boyne Valley near Dublin – are often spectacular. Newgrange was surrounded by a brilliant white quartz façade. The sunlight from the winter solstice streamed through a roof box, illuminating the passage and burial chamber of the monument. Passage tombs are scarce in Fermanagh, but court tombs and portal tombs are common here.

Extensive trade networks were forged by the first farmers. Stone axes from a quarry in Antrim were sent out along trade routes as far afield as southern England.