The Rosemarkie weights would certainly not have been considered legal in Scotland or England, but it’s very likely that in the north-east, coastal communities’ attitudes to trade were a little freer, and people exercised a degree of discretion that wouldn’t have been tolerated elsewhere. The national economy was floundering in the early 1700s, and Scotland was badly hit. It’s quite likely that local people depended on European trade and exchange for their economic wellbeing.
The Rosemarkie weights might have been buried because they were illegal and someone didn’t want to get caught with them in their possession, and for some reason were never able to recover them. We can’t be sure, but the idea of illicit trading in cosmopolitan 18th-century Rosemarkie is an intriguing one.
See also:
French Forgery Hoard
Chinese Coin Hoard
Tamlaght Hoard
A sword, bowl, cup and ring from Bronze Age Armagh
Date: 1050–950BC, Late Bronze Age
Where, when and how found: Tamlaght, County Armagh, Northern Ireland; 2004; metal detecting
Finder: Sean McGirr
Where is it now? Ulster Museum
www.nmni.com/um
Also visit: Armagh County Museum
www.nmni.com/acm
Emain Macha, Navan Visitor Centre & Fort, Armagh
www.armagh.co.uk/place/navan-centre-fort
Get involved: With a local group, like the Armagh History Group
www.armaghhistorygroup.com
Sean McGirr discovered this hoard in the townland of Tamlaght, County Armagh, in 2004. Alongside pieces of what looked like a bronze sword, there was a battered metal bowl with hundreds of tiny metal fragments sitting inside it. Sean immediately realised the significance of his discovery, and carefully retaining the soil around and within the bowl, he took the items to Armagh County Museum. An excavation at the site unearthed more fragments and conservators began the long process of cleaning and restoring them.
The hoard items
The Tamlaght Hoard dates to around 1000BC, and comprises a bronze sword, bowl, cup and ring. The items had been carefully buried in what had then been a marshy area. The cup had been placed inside the bowl, and as it had begun to break apart, the cup pieces had collected inside the bowl. Specialists were able to use some of the patterns preserved in the peat around the finds to help reconstruct the cup – and the results were intriguing.
The cup had been richly decorated with raised circular bosses, ribbed designs and punched dots. The handle was ornate, and based on analysis of the shape and design, it appears to have been made in Central Europe, around the modern Czech Republic. Cups like this have been found in Central Europe before, but Sean’s find is unique for Britain and Ireland. The bowl is of a plainer design, wide and shallow, and had likely been made in the south-east of Germany. Both items had clearly travelled a long way, probably passing through many dozens of hands in a long exchange network. Perhaps they had been given as diplomatic gifts, in marriage exchanges, as payment to a chief or warrior, or simply bartered for other local valuables.
The sword is a more typical item from Ireland in the Late Bronze Age: the blade would have been cast in a clay mould, and then fitted with a bone or wooden handle which has since rotted away. These were often functional weapons, but close analysis of the surfaces of some swords show that they have never been used – either they were made solely for ritual offerings, or they were ‘dress’ swords – for display rather than battle.
Bronze Age Armagh
Most people in the Bronze Age were small-scale farmers, living in round houses surrounded by their animals and fields. This wasn’t always a peaceful rural idyll though – there was probably inter-tribal violence between local groups, and tribes may well have raided each other’s territories for valuables and livestock as well as taking live prisoners as slaves. We also know that there were sophisticated trading networks across western Europe, and along the coasts of the British Isles (see for example the Ringlemere Cup). People could travel long distances with relative ease – they were proficient sailors, knowledgeable about the coast and the sea and river systems.
But the end of the Bronze Age saw a change in climate across much of Europe, and there’s some evidence pointing to living standards getting worse. There’s also a definite shift in social organisation.
Not all the experts agree, but many think that the explosion of bladed weapons towards the end of the Bronze Age is partly linked to the change in climate. There’s also evidence for people digging ditches and building fences around their settlements, which might mean people felt the need to defend their homes, or perhaps tribes were building these fortifications for show – competing in a regional my-ditches-are-better-than-your-ditches power struggle.
It’s possible that a new ‘breed’ of warrior elites also arose at this time – gaining power and influence because they were able to fight, defend and protect their people. Perhaps the owner of the Tamlaght Hoard was one of these warrior elites. What we do know is that the location of the hoard is close to some other very important sites.
Haughey’s Fort and the ritual pool
Nothing can been seen above ground any more of the enormous late Bronze Age defensive hillfort known as Haughey’s Fort, not far from the Tamlaght Hoard site and dating to the same era. Haughey’s Fort had three concentric rings of ditches and banks forming a rough circle round the summit of a natural hill, and the enclosed area in the centre was about 150m in diameter. When there was a threat, people would have brought their families, livestock and valuables into the hillfort, and the men would have taken up arms and faced the enemy.
Hillforts are more normally associated with the later period, the Iron Age, but hillfort-building in Ireland starts earlier than anywhere else in Britain. The more famous Navan ‘Fort’, or Emain Macha, was built nearby, but a thousand years later. Excavations have revealed that Navan was never really a defensive fort, but instead a sophisticated ritual site. When people were living at Haughey’s Fort, around 1000BC, it appears that their main ritual site was a mystical pool 300m to the north-west, at the bottom of the hill.
“We don’t know whether the Tamlaght items were offerings made by their warrior owner, or were perhaps deposited after he died”
The pool is known as ‘The King’s Stables’, because it’s said to be the place that the legendary Kings of Ulster watered their horses. This strange little pond is a bit special. About 25m in diameter and 3.5m deep, it was intentionally dug around 1000BC, and surrounded by a low earth bank.
Excavated in the 1970s, archaeologists found rich evidence of ritual deposits in the depths of the pool: clay moulds for making bronze swords like the one in the Tamlaght Hoard, the bones of sacrificed animals including dogs and deer, and most gruesome of all, a young human skull that had been severed from its body before being cast into the waters.
It seems likely that the Tamlaght Hoard site, Haughey’s Fort, and the King’s Stables pool, are linked parts of a complex landscape full of spiritual significance. We don’t know whether the Tamlaght items were offerings made by their warrior owner, or were perhaps deposited after he died. What’s certain is that the power of bronze objects, especially bronze swords, wasn’t just in their strength and value in battle. These were ritually and probably spiritually powerful items, and the act of placing or throwing them into a watery ‘grave’ was a very potent act.
Intriguingly, local place names suggest that the site of Haughey’s Fort was also known as Rath Glaise Cuilg – the ‘Fort of the Sword-Stream’. Perhaps Sean’s finds are the last of dozens of discoveries in this special landscape.
See also:
Tisbury Hoard
Carpow Logboat
Ringlemere Cup
Inverness Shoulder-belt Plate
Uniform embellishment from the original ‘Dad’s Army’
Date: Between 1794 and 1816, Early Modern
Where, when and how found: Inverness; 2012; metal detecting
<
br /> Finder: Jack Mackay
Where is it now? Inverness Museum
www.inverness.highland.museum
Also visit: National War Museum, Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh
www.nms.ac.uk/our_museums/war_museum.aspx
Jack Mackay was metal detecting in a field near Inverness when he started to discover a series of finds from the same period – musket balls, coins, and this striking uniform decoration. The Inverness Shoulder-belt Plate is copper alloy with traces of silver coating. It measures 6.5cm by 5cm, and has a distinctive thistle and crown design and the words Fort William Volunteers around the edge – a regiment that we know was active between the years 1794 and 1816.
Shoulder-belt plates were worn in the centre of the chest by British officers and soldiers alike, a striking and decorative part of their uniform that was designed to buckle their leather shoulder-belts together. Fixed with studs to one end of the leather, a hook on the back of the belt plate would enable the soldier to quickly fasten, adjust or unhook the other end of his belt. This plate has scars on the back where the metal studs and hook fastenings have come away.
Often officers’ shoulder-belt plates were made from silver, and regular soldiers’ would have been polished bronze. Volunteer regiments like the Fort William Volunteers had to pay for their own uniforms, unlike the regular army soldiers, which may explain why this belt plate was crafted in silver-gilt (base metal with a thin plating of silver) instead of solid silver. Nonetheless, when it was new it would have shone beautifully, and been a bright, silvery colour. Every regiment had their own design of shoulder-belt plate, and officers and men wore their belt plates with pride.
The Fort William Volunteers
In the late 1700s, the regular British Army was stretched to breaking point. Many men had been needed to fight wars in America, continental Europe and in the Indian colonies. After the French Revolution in 1789, hostilities across Europe led to brutal waves of Revolutionary Wars (1793–1802) and then almost without break, Britain was thrown into twelve years of Napoleonic Wars, from 1803–1815.
Volunteer regiments were assembled in Britain to provide security on the home front, and to man coastal defences in case of a French attack. Volunteer Corps were locally focused and often organised and funded by local gentry ‘doing their bit’. Part-time and under-drilled, the British Volunteer Corps were somewhere between the Territorial Army and Dad’s Army, and at the peak, over 340,000 men had subscribed across the country.
The British Volunteer Corps found themselves the butt of satirical jokes right from the start, suggesting they were badly drilled, unfit and lacking in military skills and sense. The Fort William Volunteers regiment is likely to have trained at Fort William itself, as well as at Fort George, near Inverness. Because the plate was found in Inverness, it’s been suggested that a luckless volunteer lost it during a training session or camp.
See also:
Fort George Toy Soldiers
Boar Badge of Richard III
Blair Drummond Torc Hoard
The gold jewellery that rewrites Scotland’s ancient history
Date: 300–100BC, Iron Age
Where, when and how found: Blair Drummond, Stirling; 2009; metal detecting
Finder: David Booth
Where is it now? National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
www.nms.ac.uk
These extraordinary gold treasures come with an extraordinary story to match. David Booth was in Stirling on his first outing with his metal detector – he’d previously got as far as practising his detection skills on knives and forks in his own garden. On the day in September 2009, he asked the landowner permission to search, parked his car, turned on the machine, took seven steps . . . and discovered one of the greatest treasures ever found in Scotland.
When Dr Fraser Hunter at the National Museum of Scotland received photos of the hoard items lying on David’s kitchen table the next morning, he was flabbergasted, and archaeologists were immediately sent to the find site.
David had unearthed a stash of four gold neck collars known as ‘torcs’ that are more than 2,000 years old. Torcs were worn by elite members of a tribe as high-status, highly decorated jewellery, which would rest at the base of the wearer’s neck.
Two of the torcs are ‘ribbon torcs’, a familiar style in Scotland and Ireland, where a fine strip of gold is hammered into a spiral.
Only half of the third torc was buried, broken into two pieces. When complete, it would have formed a full circle necklet, with a clasp to join the ends together. The unusual style suggests that it was made by craftspeople in south-west France.
The fourth torc rewrites the history books. The main body of the piece is crafted from eight strands of braided gold wire, a common technique and shape used in British torcs. But the end terminals have a pattern of decoration never seen before in the British Isles. Made from hooped and braided gold wires filled with tiny gold beads, delicate gold wire and a very fine fastening chain, the work indicates that the jewellery maker learned his or her skills from Ancient Greek or Roman jewellers – and then combined it with the traditional British style. Either the jeweller or the torc made an extraordinary journey, from the Mediterranean to the heart of Scotland. And whoever received and wore this exotic piece would have been very important indeed.
The fact that this piece, and the craft skills to make it, travelled such a great distance, reveals that the people living near Stirling 2,000 years ago were much more powerful and well-connected than we had ever previously thought. Archaeologists had thought that Iron Age tribes in Scotland were quite isolated and inward-looking. They thought that the British Isles was a cultural backwater, compared to the flourishing societies in continental Europe. But the Blair Drummond torcs prove that these Stirlingshire people were also rich and powerful, and well connected to the cultural flows across prehistoric Europe.
Once the find was reported, archaeologists began excavating, to recover valuable information about how the hoard was originally deposited. The neckrings had been put in a shallow hole inside what had once been a circular timber-framed building. The wood and thatch had long since rotted away, but the ‘footprint’ of the structure remains in the ground.
In Iron Age times this would have been an isolated and boggy site and it’s unlikely that this was just a normal house – but was it some kind of ritual place where the torcs were buried as an offering to the gods? Or was the building a much older structure, with the torcs buried in a place linked to the ancestors? Iron Age people across north-western Europe made offerings of valuable metal artefacts in semi-watery places like bogs and marshes, and human ‘Bog Bodies’ reveal that people were also sometimes sacrificed in rites we don’t fully understand. We don’t know the details of who or what the Iron Age people were worshipping, but the value of the offerings proves that this was a very important activity that communities invested a lot of resources in.
Further research will ultimately reveal more about the early peoples of Scotland, and their rich and sophisticated cultures.
See also:
Winchester Hoard
Langstone Tankard
Horns and Crotal Musical Instruments
Potent instruments inspired by cattle
Date: Around 800BC, Late Bronze Age
Where, when and how found: Horns: Drumbest, County Antrim; 1840; peat cutting in a bog Crotal: Calhame ‘Fort’, County Antrim; 1887; discovered in an ancient ditch
Finder: Mr Thompson (Horns), Mr McLean (Crotal)
Where are they now? Two of the horns from the Drumbest Hoard are on display at the Ulster Museum, Belfast
www.amni.com/um
The Crotal is on display at Armagh County Museum, Armagh City
www.amni.com/acm
Listen: Simon O’Dwyer playing the original Drumbest horns at Ulster Museum
www.bagofbees.co.uk/26treasures/#
More info at
www.ancientmusicireland.com
During the Bronze Age in Ireland man
y astonishing bronze artefacts were deposited in bogs, rivers and lakes. Clearly an important part of our ancestors’ ritual lives was to make offerings of precious objects at watery places in the landscape. These horns were found in an ancient bog; the crotal was discovered in an ancient ditch. Almost three thousand years old, these musical instruments can still make incredible music.
The Horns
More than one hundred Bronze Age horns have been found in Ireland – more than anywhere else in Europe. There are two types of horn – a ‘side blow’ horn with the hole towards the narrow closed end and an ‘end blow’ horn which is more trumpet-shaped. For a long time no one was sure about how to get a clear sound from these ancient horns, until the parallel with the native Australian didgeridoo was identified. Musicians suggested that these horns weren’t supposed to be blown into like a trumpet – instead, if you use circular breathing and loose, vibrating lips, a deep, rhythmic, musical sound is produced.
The two types of horns (end and side blow) are often found in pairs, perhaps because they were intended to be played together. The end blow horn would be used to make a droning single bass note and the side blow horn would play the tune. Unlike many other horns which are broken, the Drumbest horns are intact, giving us a realistic idea of their musical potential.
We won’t ever be sure how these instruments were played, how they sounded, or even whether they were used to make ‘music’ or whether they made sounds for a different purpose – summoning the gods, marking the passing of time or a specific event, perhaps. Modern specialist musicians can create some very sophisticated sounds and tunes with the horns, played separately and in pairs, but it’s always possible that they’re making them sound more ‘musical’ than our ancestors ever did.
Britain's Secret Treasures Page 25