Book Reviewed: Hunter-Gatherer Ireland: Making Connections in an Island World by Graeme Warren

How different were hunter gatherers of Ireland with the rest of the Europeans This is the first comprehensive study about Irish hunter-gatherers based on archaeological evidence with anthropological and ecological perspectives. This is a key contribution to understanding how Ireland was first settled by the early humans and adapted over millennia. The first humans arrived after the end of the last Ice age at around 8000 BCE. The post-glacial landscape was heavily forested with rivers and coastlines. With his studies on tool kits (microliths, stone tools), pollen records, faunal remains, geological conditions, and mobility patterns, he reconstructs the environmental context in which Mesolithic communities lived. The absence of permanent structures is interpreted as evidence of mobile lifeways. The book ends with discussion of the Neolithic transition when humans became farmers at around 4000 BCE. Hunter-gatherers are people who live by foraging by hunting wild animals, fishing, and gathering wild plants, fruits, nuts, and roots rather than farming or raising animals. Around 10,000–7,000 years ago, neolithic revolution, the farming as an alternative spread in Asia and Europe. Farming led to diets with less vitamin D from animal foods hunter gatherers were used to, and this accelerated selection for lighter skin. By about 6,000–5,000 years ago, lighter skin became common in European farming populations, partly hastened by with weaker sunlight. The author complains that archeological and historical data in the academia was interpreted in colonial frame of mind, that is, hunter-gatherers are "primitive," static, or lacking complexity when compared to agricultural societies. He assures that his approach to this study is different. But reading the book, the author doesn't systematically prove or develop this critique through the book.