On nearly all excavated Neolithic sites fragments of pottery were found. Even the earliest pots, known as Carinated Bowls, were carefully fashioned from well-kneaded clay from which air bubbles and grit had been removed; the finished vessels were then meticulously polished before firing. Distinctive styles emerged, named by archaeologists as Lyles Hill ware, Goodland pottery, Carrowkeel ware, Grooved Ware and the like, with lugs, incised ornament and cord-impressed decoration. Many pots have been located at ritual sites, demonstrating that belief in the afterlife was powerful in Neolithic Ireland.
Episode 4
NEOLITHIC MEGALITHS
Just west of Sligo town on the top of Knocknarea mountain glistens a massive cairn visible from many miles around. Known as Queen Maeve’s tomb, this is just about the largest Stone Age monument to be seen anywhere in Europe. Clearly, over many years, a well-organised community struggled uphill with tens of thousands of great rocks to create this artificial mound as a monument to their dead. What is more, this enormous monument erected in the fourth millennium BC is no mere heap of stones: almost certainly it contains a carefully constructed passage grave which has yet to be excavated.
As Neolithic farmers removed much of Ireland’s forest canopy, cleared the scrub, worked the ground with stone-shod adzes and wooden ploughs for crops of corn, and tended their herds, they created settled communities which grew in numbers and wealth. Firmly believing in an afterlife and laying claim to the lands they occupied, they venerated the bones of their ancestors. Archaeologists call these monuments megaliths, after the Greek words for large stones. More than 1,200 megalithic monuments have been identified in Ireland.
The Carrowmore complex, on flat land looking up at Knocknarea, is the largest megalithic cemetery in the whole of Europe. To view the array of around eighty-five portal tombs, passage graves and chambered burial mounds is an awesome experience.
Court cairns, the earliest megalithic monuments, were probably temples of a kind, where farming communities paid respect to departed ancestors and invoked magical help to ensure good harvests. One of the most impressive court tombs is at Creevykeel in Co. Sligo; it has a characteristic semicircular forecourt constructed with massive stones and paved with cobbles, leading to a wedge-shaped mound seventy metres long with chambers for the dead roofed with large flat slabs.
Portal tombs, or dolmens, are the most splendid and striking reminders of Ireland’s Stone Age farmers, particularly when seen against the skyline. Built of three or more great upright stones, carrying a massive capstone sloping downwards towards the back, these above-ground graves were described incorrectly in the nineteenth century as ‘druids’ altars’. Capstones of enormous size, sometimes brought from a considerable distance, had to be placed on the stone uprights, presumably hauled up earthen or stone ramps by men using oxen, ropes, timber sledges and rollers, and then lifted in stages by means of levers and platforms raised gradually to the required height. The capstone at Brownshill, Co. Carlow, is estimated to weigh a hundred tons.
The most awe-inspiring creations of Neolithic farmers in Ireland are the passage tombs, regarded as the first great achievements of monumental architecture in prehistoric Europe. The most magnificent are to be found in the huge necropolis in the Boyne Valley, Co. Meath. This includes Dowth and Knowth, the latter being a great tomb of carefully layered sods, shale, clay and stones, surrounded by eighteen smaller graves. Here in the large mound two long passages were carefully given an equinoctial orientation: one to receive the sun when it rose on 20–21 March, the spring equinox marking the start of the sowing season; and the other on the 22–23 September equinox, to celebrate the harvest. A flint macehead, exquisitely carved with sunken lozenge-shaped facets and spirals, was found at the entrance, where stones richly decorated with spirals, circles, boxed rectangles and arcs were placed.
On top of a small hillock overlooking the Boyne is the finest passage grave of them all—Newgrange. Towards the end of the fourth millennium BC a great mound, just over 103 metres in diameter, was raised using some 200,000 tons of material from the Boyne a kilometre away, faced all over with slabs of sparkling white quartz and surrounded by ninety-seven kerbstones, many of them elaborately carved. The twenty-four-metre passage rises gently to a burial chamber with three niches, each containing shallow stone basins. Archaeologists were astonished at the dryness of the passage and the chamber: the slabs forming the roof slope slightly downwards from the centre to prevent damp percolating down, and they had not only been caulked with sea sand and burnt soil but also etched with grooves to drain off rain water.
It was at the winter solstice in 1968 that Professor Michael O’Kelly discovered the most renowned feature of Newgrange. He noticed that the sun, as it rose above the horizon to the south-east at 8.58 a.m., cast a pencil-thin beam of light into the centre of the burial chamber, striking the triple-spiral motif carved in the deepest recess of the tomb. Seventeen minutes later it was gone. The ray of sunlight reaches here only on the day of the winter solstice. Only a highly organised and sophisticated society, equipped as it was with little more than stone, could have created such a powerfully moving way of delivering the message that the dead could look forward to a new life beyond, just as nature began a fresh period of growth after the depths of midwinter.
Episode 5
COPPER, BRONZE AND GOLD: 2000–1000 BC
In 1962 the geologist John Jackson began to explore one of the very few prehistoric copper mines to survive in Europe, Mount Gabriel in west Cork. The miners had cut a total of twenty-five mineshafts into the hill, then lit fires as far along the shafts as they would stay alight, and finally thrown water on to the hot rock to shatter it. With the use of large cobbles collected from the sea shore, grooved to give anchorage to ropes, the broken rock was scooped out, smashed and made ready for the furnace. First the ore had to be roasted gently to burn out the sulphur, and then more fiercely fired with charcoal fanned with bellows. The total weight of copper and bronze objects found and dated to the early Bronze Age is around 750 kilograms—impressive enough in itself—but this is only a tiny proportion of what was produced: Jackson estimated that the prehistoric mines in this south-western corner of Ireland produced no fewer than 370 tonnes of finished copper. Copper is made stronger and more malleable and turned into bronze when it is mixed with other metals. At this early stage it seems that arsenic, available close by, was the main additive.
Most evocative of a bygone culture shining across the centuries are the astonishingly rich finds of gold made in Ireland. Gold almost certainly was panned in the beds of streams flowing off ancient igneous rocks, particularly in Co. Wicklow. As the last millennium BC progressed, so the quantity and quality of gold objects in Ireland increased remarkably. The finds from this period are among the most elaborately decorated to be found anywhere in Europe.
The largest gold hoard to be found anywhere outside the eastern Mediterranean was unearthed close to the hillfort of Mooghaun in the 1850s. Known as the ‘Great Clare Find’, the 146 ornaments included a great number of pennanular bracelets with expanded terminals and dress fastenings so heavy that they must have been a burden to wear.
Another hoard discovered at Gorteenreagh, also in Co. Clare, included a gold lock-ring hair fastener so perfectly and intricately fashioned that modern jewellers are convinced it would be almost impossible to copy. It consists of two conical shapes and a tube with a neat slit into which locks of hair were enclosed. Only after microscopic examination was it discovered that the tiny concentric lines on the cones were made up of perfectly laid wires a mere third of a millimetre wide.
The quality of the gold-working was matched by that of the bronze-smiths. The craft of the bronze worker was well illustrated by the discovery in the 1820s of a hoard of over two hundred objects in a bog at Dowris in Co. Offaly. Dating from around 700 BC, it included twenty-six beautifully crafted bronze horns which can be blown either at the side or at the end to produce a powerful sound similar to that of an Australian didje
ridoo. These seem to have been modelled on cattle horns and may have been connected with the widespread fertility cult centred on the bull. This is probably the explanation for round bronze objects thought to represent a bull’s scrotum.
The Dowris hoard also contained fine swords, socketed axes, razors and a set of tools for a carpenter, including gouges, chisels and knives. Expertly crafted from riveted sheets of bronze is a great cauldron with two large rings so that it could be suspended over a fire and then carried to a feast, fully laden and suspended from a pole on the shoulders of two strong men. A beautiful flesh-hook, decorated with birds, found at Dunaverney, Co. Antrim, was no doubt for guests to fish out pieces of stewed meat from such cauldrons.
The archaeological finds from the last millennium BC are dominated by bronze weapons, including a fearsome eighty-centimetre-long rapier from Lissane in Co. Down. Copper was now mixed with lead and with tin, most of it thought to have been found in the beds of Co. Wicklow streams, but the rest undoubtedly imported from Cornwall. New methods of core casting, using twin-valved moulds, made it possible to construct spear-heads with hollow sockets for secure fastening on shafts, and axe-heads with raised flanges for hammering onto handles. Numerous shields date from this period, many made of leather stretched while wet on wooden moulds and then hammered on—experiments have shown that these shields provided a more effective defence than bronze.
A new and deadlier slashing sword also makes its appearance. Clearly this was a time of more intensive warfare. And why have so many valuable objects been found secreted in the ground? There is mounting evidence that this was a period of growing social turmoil, and that precious gold and bronze pieces were left as votive offerings to appease the deities in times of trouble.
Episode 6
BEFORE THE CELTS
What caused peoples in Ireland to place so many precious objects, including heavy gold ornaments, deep in the soil? The answer seems to be that rapid change dislocated communities, bringing about circumstances they could not explain, so that they felt the need to appease the gods by ever more generous offerings.
Climatic change certainly created problems. The winds came more regularly from the Atlantic, bringing persistent rains. Cultivated soils became leached of their fertility, and slowly peat bogs extended, driving communities downhill where the stiff clays were more difficult to work. At the same time the population of Ireland was rising, and disputes over the possession of land almost certainly intensified.
An elaborate complex of paired stone circles and alignments at Beaghmore, on the southern slopes of the Sperrin Mountains, seems to have been a ceremonial site where the aid of the gods was invoked to maintain fertility. Here the soil was becoming exhausted from overgrazing around 1500 BC.
Stone circles from the Bronze Age are found all over Ireland, particularly in Ulster and the south-west. Some have stones of modest size, as at Drumskinny in Co. Fermanagh, while others, such as the Ballynoe stone circle in Co. Down, are constructed from boulders weighing many tons. Some stones are taller than the rest and are set with flat stones to point to particular features aligned with the rising and setting of the sun on days of special significance such as the solstice and equinox. Standing stones are sometimes associated with these circles, but others, including the seven-metre stone at Punchestown in Co. Kildare, mysteriously stand alone.
The Giant’s Ring, by the Lagan river outside Belfast, was clearly a place of ritual importance. Here a great bank four metres high encircles a flat area two hundred metres across, with a portal tomb in the middle. We can only speculate about the ancient rituals performed in such places. There are some five hundred wedge-shaped tombs in Ireland, and here and elsewhere the broken remains of flat-bottomed beakers have been found in such quantity that archaeologists for long referred to the Bronze Age inhabitants of Ireland as ‘Beaker People’.
Careful examination of pollen shows that cereal crops became more widespread and that the land was more intensively cultivated. The great forest canopy was much reduced, and there is evidence that some woodland was carefully managed. Trees, such as hazel and ash, were not uprooted but coppiced close to ground level so that, after three or four years, tall, straight branches grew up to be harvested for fencing, posts, axe handles, spear shafts and firewood.
The fine beaker ware, carefully decorated, was favoured for votive offerings, but these people also mixed grit into the clay before it was coiled and smoothed into everyday pots capable of withstanding heat during cooking. A speciality of Bronze Age Ireland was the fulacht fiadh, a cooking place constructed close to a stream. A rectangular trough was dug into the ground and lined with oak planks. This was first filled with water, and stones heated in a fire close by were then thrown into the water and replenished with further hot stones until it boiled. An experiment carried out by Professor Michael O’Kelly, at a site at Ballyvourney, Co. Cork, demonstrated that water could be brought to the boil in half an hour and that hot stones added every few minutes kept the water simmering merrily. Following the modern recipe of twenty minutes to the pound and twenty minutes over, he cooked a straw-wrapped ten-pound leg of mutton to perfection.
Metal-working had begun in Ireland around 2000 BC, at a time when Egypt’s second golden age of the Middle Kingdom flourished, the Hittites were invading Anatolia, the Mycenaeans were advancing into Greece, and the Minoan sea empire centred on Knossos was approaching its zenith. By the middle of the last millennium BC Hittite power was but a memory, Knossos was in ruins, and the Mycenaeans, once conquerors, were now the vanquished. Barbarians from the north and east, advancing on horseback and with superior metallurgical skills, were transforming the ancient cradles of civilisation.
These convulsions sent shock waves westwards to the Atlantic seaboard. Pushed from behind and seeking fresh lands by the sword, fresh arrivals in Ireland brought with them new cultures and more sophisticated weaponry. Perhaps it was they who led bands of warriors to construct imposing stone forts with elaborate chevaux-de-frise defences at places such as Dún Aengus on a high cliff edge on Inishmore in the Aran Islands, off the coast of Co. Galway.
One of the most exquisite votive offerings of gold to be found in Ireland was the Broighter hoard, secreted in a bog in Co. Londonderry. It includes a charming model boat with oars, a cup, necklaces, and a torc with intricate, swirling patterns; this latter object, with its distinctive style and mode of execution, demonstrates indisputably that the Celts had arrived in Ireland.
Episode 7
THE COMING OF THE CELTS
The Celts were the first people north of the Alps to emerge into recorded history. Their distinctive culture evolved during the second millennium BC between the east bank of the Rhine and Bohemia. Then it spread south-east into the Balkans, north towards Denmark, and west to France, northern Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain. By around 500 BC the Celts dominated much of the northern half of Europe. They sacked Rome in 390 BC and looted the temple of the oracle at Delphi in 278 BC, crossing the Hellespont to conquer a province of Anatolia thereafter.
The Greeks called them Celts, the Romans named them Gauls, and they left their mark in placids across Europe and beyond. Examples include Galicia, the north-western province of Spain, and Galati in Romania, and later St Paul was to write epistles to the Galatians in what is now the state of Turkey. They named the Rhine, the Danube and many of the great rivers of the continent. The cult of Lug spread across Europe, and places as far apart as Louth, León, London, Leiden, Lyon and Legnica preserve the memory of devotion to this Celtic sun god.
When did the Celts come to Ireland? A clear answer cannot be given because they do not seem to have formed a distinct race. Celtic civilisation may have been created by a people in central Europe, but it was primarily a culture—a language and a way of life—spread from one people to another. Archaeologists have searched in vain for evidence of dramatic invasions of Ireland, and they now prefer to think of a steady infiltration from Britain and the European mainland over the ce
nturies. The first Celtic-speakers may have come to Ireland as early as 1000 BC. They were arriving in greater numbers from about 500 BC; equipped with iron weapons, led by nobles on horseback or in chariots, and commanding the countryside from their hillforts, they brought the native peoples of Ireland under subjection.
The most successful piece of propaganda ever produced in Ireland was Lebor Gabála Érenn (‘The Book of the Taking of Ireland’), compiled in the eleventh century, but drawing on traditions going back several centuries earlier. This was an elaborate attempt to reconcile ideas the Irish had of their remote origins with the Bible, in particular the Book of Genesis. According to this account, Ireland was successively inhabited by five blood-related invading groups.
The first to come was Cessair, granddaughter of Noah, who arrived with three men and fifty maidens. Of that party only Fintan survived the Flood. Then after a gap of three hundred years another group led by Partholón landed in Ireland, but all except one died of plague. The third invasion was led by Nemed, a ruler of the Scythians in Greece. In Ireland they were oppressed by evil monster spirits, the Fomoirí, better known as the Formorians. They were forced back to Greece, where they made boats out of their bags, and calling themselves the Fir Bolg (literally, the ‘bag men’), they made a successful return. Their five leaders became kings of the five provinces of Ireland.
A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process Page 3