Neolithic and Bronze Age Landscapes of North Mayo: Report 2011

dates from the macrofossil remains and from the archaeological material that the main occupation
of Céide Fields was in the middle of the fourth millennium BC.
In 1988 an exhibition of ongoing research projects throughout UCD led to collaborative research
between Professor Peter Mitchell and Dr. Rory O’Donnell of the Experimental Physics Department
and the Céide Fields research project. The Radiocarbon equipment was used to date many of the
pine trees in the bogs overlying Céide Fields and Belderrig field systems and numerous other
locations in North Mayo. The series of dates provided for the North Mayo pine trees confirmed the
broadly synchronous nature of these trees as originally commented on by Otway. They also confirm
the general indication that the bog in which the majority of the dated trees grew was established by
3000 BC and that the wall boundaries beneath must date to the fourth millennium BC at the latest
(Caulfield et al. 1998).
In 1996 Dr. Lisa Doyle who had worked on the Céide Fields project as an undergraduate undertook a
pollen and tephra analysis at two locations, one on the Belderg Beg excavation and the second in
Geevraun townland about 400 metres to the west beside a peat monolith and pine stump for which
Radiocarbon dates had been obtained.
The North Mayo Research and the Public
From the first Open Day on 15 August 1970 it was always the policy of the archaeologists involved
to communicate with the wider public through on site visits and through the media. Articles in the
local and national press brought the significance of the discoveries to the general public despite the
fact that visually even the minor part of the monument which could be seen was about as
uninteresting as a collapsed stone wall can be. In 1972 the television programme The First Farmers
was broadcast on Telefís Éireann as it then was titled and the visual impact of the scenery combined
with the story of the roots of Irish farming led to increased visitor numbers in North Mayo. In the
latter half of the eighties, European funding was being made available for the construction of
interpretative centres to manage and increase visitor numbers at key heritage sites throughout the
country. A request to national government that Céide Fields be considered for funding was rejected
on the legitimate grounds that a location which was attracting relatively small numbers of tourists
did not require an interpretative centre to manage those tourists. An appeal to local government in
Co. Mayo received a much more positive response. An initial grant of £40,000 made available by the
County Development Team was matched by local fundraising of 50,000 and a further £40,000 from
the County Council itself created an Irish fund of close to £130,000. European funding of 75% now
left a project of half a million pounds ready to be developed by autumn 1988. The project was
subsequently encouraged to be increased to £2.5 million with the understanding that external
funding of almost £2 million would be available though this was subsequently reduced to half that
amount. By summer 1990 the scaling back of the project was causing much disappointment but a
visit by the Taoiseach Charles Haughey led to the involvement of national government and the
acceptance of responsibility for the development of the project by the Office of Public Works. Three
years later Céide Fields interpretative centre was opened in an award winning building designed in
house in the Office of Public Works, only the second occasion ever that the Office had received the
Triennial Gold Medal of the RIAI.
The Céide Fields development project had got great support at immediately local and county level
and this continued after the responsibility for the project was taken over by the Office of Public
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