The later part of the Bronze Age (1500-700 BC) was a time of settlement expansion and economic prosperity in Ireland. This was a landscape of small autonomous farming communities but there is also evidence for control of territory and population, involving centralized organization of trade and economy, ritual, and military force. That concentration of power was connected to the emergence of chiefdom polities active in the consolidation of large regional territories. Their competitive tendencies led on occasion to conflict and warfare, at a time of growing militarism evident in the mass...