Technological change in the agrarian economy of early medieval Ireland: New archaeological evidence for the introduction of the coulter plough

Several authors have argued that coulter ploughs were not introduced into Ireland until the Viking period. This theory is problematic given the extraordinary corpus of archaeological evidence for cereal production in pre-Viking Ireland, including several hundred corn drying kilns and some 153 water-powered mill sites. Using comparisons with continental examples, two pre-ninth century plough coulters are identified. The implications of these discoveries and the relationships between coulter ploughs and other cereal processing technologies are considered.