Early medieval Irish watermills
Full details
| Authors & editors | |
| Publisher | The Mills Archive Trust |
| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Languages | |
| Medium | Digital |
| Edition | 1 |
| Topics | Wind & watermills > Other Europe (not GB) > Island of Ireland |
| Tags | |
| Scope & content | An examination of the role of watermill technology in the economic intensification of Early Medieval Ireland, with reference to recent advances in archaeologists’ understanding of their design, contexts of discovery and chronological development. Alexandra Miller, a volunteer at the Mills Archive Trust used her experience there to write this publication During my third year at university I took I course on Early Medieval Britain, in which we were allowed to choose our own essay topics. Having been taught that compared to elsewhere in the British Isles Early Medieval watermills survive particularly well in Ireland, and missing studying mills very much, I decided to make this my topic. Part of her introduction (the full paper is attached): Contrary to common opinion the economy of Early Medieval Ireland was reasonably advanced. During approximately 400 to 1000AD we see a gradual intensification of the broadly agricultural economy with a concentration in the seventh to ninth centuries (Kerr et al, 2013, p. 38). It is now thought that Ireland had a balance of both pastoral farming, focused on cattle; and arable farming focussed on barley (Edwards, 1990, p. 60). Throughout the Early Medieval period we also see interaction with places such as Gaul and the Mediterranean indicated by the discovery of foreign pottery types in Ireland (Kerr et al, 2013, p. 38). Therefore, in the Irish economy at this time was both developed, in terms of its farming techniques and also because of its trading connections. This essay will discuss how the use of Early Irish watermills has developed our understanding of their economy with particular reference to recent excavations, as these have been extremely useful in providing new information (due to an improvement of scientific techniques) that previous excavations have not. This can be split into three parts: the designs of watermills, of which there were several; their origins and chronological development; and finally, the context of watermills, for example the landscape they sit in and who they belonged to. |
Divisions within this publication
- 1: 1: Introduction page 1
- 2: 2: Design page 4
- 3: 3: Chronology page 8
- 4: 4: Context page 9
- 5: 5: Conclusions page 11
- 6: 6: Bibliography page 12
- 7: 7: About the author page 13
