The new technology of farming began in Ireland before 3000BC, over 5,000 years ago.
Farming and the introduction of pottery began around the same time in the north of Ireland.
Childe and Pigott(1931), called this the Neolithic A. The pottery was shouldered and flat based in design. Other features of this culture were stone axes, flint knives and scapers and the kite-shaped, projectile heads.
These were roughly similar to the British assemblages of the British Primary Neolithic and Gordon Childe's Western European Zone.
The construction of tombs began in the Neolithic and Ireland, the Isle of Man and South-West Scotland show certain morphological preferences in this province of the Atlantic Sea zones.
Burial rites were communal and by inhumation and cremation in megalithic tombs which were covered by trapezoidal long cairns which tend to face east towards the rising sun.
Evidence settlement in the Neolithic is rare and archaeologists tend to get their information on the life of the early farmers from the burial monuments.