Lecture Series at Clare Museum – Ancient Grains in Ireland
The new season of Clare Museum’s Lecture Series continues on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 7.30pm, with a talk by Meriel McClatchie entitled “Ancient Grains in Ireland”. This lecture will examine archaeological evidence for cereals grown in Ireland over the past 6,000 years.
Cereal remains are often recovered during archaeological excavations. The study of this material is known as archaeobotany, which is the study of past societies and environments through the analysis of preserved plant remains. These tiny, fragile remains require special conditions to enable their preservation over centuries and millennia.
Most often they are preserved because they have been burnt, perhaps when being dried or cooked over a fire, or when dumped into a fire as waste.Plant remains can also become preserved when kept constantly wet (waterlogged), which is sometimes encountered in urban deposits.
The lecture will take several points in time over the past 6,000 years to explore the character of arable agriculture in Ireland and how it changed over the years. Particular attention will be paid to farming evidence from County Clare. This lecture will draw upon case studies to explore changing food practices and what these can reveal about broader society.
Meriel McClatchie is an Associate Professor in Archaeology at UCD School of Archaeology. She completed BA and MA degrees in Archaeology at UCC, and a PhD at University College London. Before joining UCD, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Queen’s University Belfast and University College Cork.
Meriel also worked as an archaeobotanist in the private sector for several years. At UCD, she is Deputy Director of the Earth Institute and runs the Ancient Foods Research Group and Archaeobotany Laboratory. Meriel’s research is focused on environmental archaeology in Europe, with a particular interest in food (from early prehistoric to early modern societies), prehistoric landscapes and settlements, and archaeobotany. Her current collaborative projects include CROPREVIVE (Mapping underutilised crops in Ireland – past, present and future), FOODSEC (Food security in Bronze Age Ireland) and FOODCULT (Food, culture and identity in Ireland, 1550–1650).
The talk begins at 7:30pm and admission is free of charge. While entry is free, there is likely to be a high level of interest in the talk, so those attending are asked to book a seat in advance by emailing claremuseum@clarecoco.ie
Telephone bookings will not be accepted. The Lecture Series will continue at Clare Museum on the second Wednesday of each month, until May 2025.
Page last reviewed: 05/02/25
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