Mayo Theme -
7
Evolution of a Mayo Landscape
The study of the past involves many techniques
and skills all designed to enable us to glean as
clear a picture of the past as possible. Most are
directed towards the immediate top surface of the
earth but other techniques take a deeper look
beneath the ground to explain or at least to add to
the knowledge base of how people interacted with
their environment in the past. Paleoenvironmental
studies provide the environmental context for
this.
Brackloon Lough in Brackloon Wood situated on
the foothills of Croagh Patrick and Lough Fark in
the hinterland of Mayo Abbey are two sites in Mayo
where pollen analysis reveals some very interesting
data in terms of the first millennium AD.
Pollen data from both sites indicates that
people have been active in these areas for
millennia. Indeed a minor peak in plantain grass
occurs at Brackloon at c.5580 BP marking perhaps
the arrival of the first farmers to the area.
However, there is no significant Neolithic
activity in the Mayo Abbey landscape at this
time. The first forest clearances or Landnam event
noted in the Mayo Abbey landscape is in the Bronze
Age, when trees are cleared for pastoral
farming.
Between c. AD 1- 400 we see regeneration of
forests at both sites as farming activity slowed or
even ceased and population was in decline. The slow
growing elm and yew increased and this is
significant in terms of Maigh Eó the
'Plain of the
Yew' that gives Mayo its name. Both sites
experience this 'Iron Age Lull', which sees the
decline in the occurrences of plantain grass as
partial regeneration of local forest took place.
This situation is replicated in several sites
around the country.
Photo: Dympna
McDonagh
An intensified period of land use is noted in
the Early Christian period as the levels of grass
pollen rise. This is also the period of the
raths, cashels and
ringforts. In the Brackloon study there is a
noticeable lack of cereal pollen in the analysis,
indicating that these farmers under the shadow of
the Croagh Patrick were more interested in the
rearing of animals. In the Lough Fark pollen study
the opposite seems to be true in that there is an
apparent expansion of arable farming and in
particular the cultivation of cereal rye close to
Lough Fark. The emergence of this type of farming
activity seems to correspond with the establishment
of the monastic settlement at Mayo
Abbey in c, 670.
The increase in population and the influence of
monastic settlement had an impact on these Mayo
landscapes in the Early Christian period. The
establishment of the Anglo Saxon monastery in a
largely pastoral landscape gave rise to alternative
components of the agricultural economy for the
first time.
The landscape around Mayo Abbey still bears the
hallmarks of this activity with its large areas of
open grassland and bogland with only remnants of
woodland cover remaining. The landscape at
Brackloon however, has reclaimed its woodland
mantle as the forest there, left to its own devices
and without the interference of man, has
regenerated itself.
Perhaps the different approaches to farming in
these two Mayo landscapes in the early part of the
first millennium had a profound effect, which
resonates to the present day.
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This
project has been supported by the EU as part of the Culture
2000 programme.