A history

h y of Irreland
d in 1000 objjects
http://ww
ww.museum.ie/en
n/info/100-objectts.aspx

Every Saturday, in the Weeekend Reviiew of the IIrish Timess, Fintan O’Toole
O
takes a look at A History off Ireland in
n 100 objectts. Each ob
bject opens a
windoow on to an importantt moment in n Irish histtory.

Most of
o the objectts featured are exhibiteed across thee National Museum
M off
Ireland
d but otherss will come from a variety of otherr institutions.

O’Too
ole adopts thhree simple rules when
n selecting oobjects:

‘An “oobject” is deefined as a single man--made entityy, a definition that exclludes

buildin
ngs. The objjects are geenerally presented chroonologicallyy. And unlesss there
is an overwhelmin
o ng reason to o the contra
ary, the objeects themsellves are acccessible
to read
ders in publlic institutio
ons or spacees’.

The serries begins with a lookk at a Mesoliithic Fish T

Trap, ca. 500
00BC which h can be currrently seen
n at the Natiional
Museuum of Ireland, Archaeollogy and co ontinues throough to objeects of the 20th
2 centuryy.

Uneearthiing th
he long histtory of our island
d, onee object
at a timee
We cann learn astonnishing thinngs from an old object, but what makes
m it pulsse with life is the idea of the people who
touched it and werre touched byb it. In a new series, F
FINTAN O'TOOLE
O uses
u 100 objjects to reveeal the fasciinating
y of Ireland
history

WITH THE TECH HNOLOGIE ES at our diisposal we ccan reprodu

uce almost any
a object w with absolute precision.. We
can turrn worn or ssmudged surrfaces into clear
c and viibrant images. We can recast fragm
ments as unnified entitiees.
Reprod ductions cann have the same
s feel an
nd form as tthe original.. Some peop
ple who runn museums have
h concluuded
that in the digital aage we are no
n longer innterested in mere inert things and must
m be imm mersed in experiences.
e

And thhere is plentyy of good thheory to jusstify this bellief. Why sh

hould we make
m a fetishh of an objecct just becauuse it is
old? Why
W should w we imaginee that the ideea of an origginal meanss anything in a culture oof mass rep production? Isn’t
there so
omething prrimitive – or,
o on the otther hand, soomething un nhealthily consumerist
c t – about treeating objeccts with
reverennce? Is theree any real difference
d beetween the ddesire to see the origin
nal of, say thhe Book of Kells and thhe
creepy compulsionn that makees someone pay a year’ s salary to buy b one of Elvis’s
E usedd hankies on n eBay?

There’s a good, soober, respecctably scienttific answerr to these qu uestions. Un

nlike reprodductions or digital
d imagges,
originaal objects arre not static.. They contaain secrets tthat can be unlocked with
w ever new wer techniqques. We aree
learnin
ng astonishinng things frrom old objeects, things we never th hought theyy could reveeal – exactly
y how old thhey are,
where they came ffrom, what their own histories
h migght be. No one
o knew ev ven 20 yearrs ago that itt would be
possiblle some dayy to use tinyy fragments of an anciennt object to figure out howh old it iis or that thee chemicalss in the
teeth of a body in a grave migght tell us where
w the ow
wner of an ancient
a sword had spennt his days.

But bey
yond this em minently rattional excusse is an irrat
ational forcee. You feel it
i every timee you look at somethinng in a
museumm, find it innteresting, and
a then, loooking at thee label, see the
t words, “This
“ is a coopy. The original is . . .”
.
There is
i a deep annd entirely unreasonabl
u e disappoinntment. You u know that what you aare seeing iss probably better,
b
clearerr, more whoole than the original. Bu
ut it is not thhe thing itseelf. And thaat disappoinntment tells us somethinng
important about thhe magneticc attractivenness of histooric objects.

An oldd object doess not carry such

s a poten nt charge juust because of the thing gs that can bbe reproduced so well with
w
our tecchnologies: tthe form, thhe materialss, the decoraative skills. What makees it pulse w with life is th
he idea of thhe
people who toucheed and weree touched by y it. It is thee hands thatt made it, th
he eyes that feasted on or feared it.. It is
the sim
mple, awe-innspiring thought that th his thing connnects me to o my ancesttors. I may nnever fully understand it,
especiaally if it com
mes from thhe very distaant past, butt in the mom ment I encou unter it I am
m sharing so ome tiny fraagment
of the lives that it touched.

This sense of shharing something with thet past isn’’t entirely abstract.
a Maany of
hings that suurvive from
the th m the past haad an aura oof magic aboout them.
Someetimes theyy were created specificaally to generrate that feeeling of awee.
Someetimes theyy acquired itt through their associatiion with mo omentous evvents.

The magic
m they have for uss may spring g from diffeerent consid
derations – that
t
they are old andd famous – butb it is at leeast analogoous to what our ancestoors may
have felt in theirr presence. If you look at a magicaal jade axe from
f 6,000 years
ago the
t feeling yyou get is sttill the feeling it was m
meant to evo oke, that of being
b
in thee presence oof a thing th
hat represennts a force bbeyond thinggs, somethinng
largee and mysterriously evocative. The Greeks hadd a word forr it: charis, the
alluree of objectss.

OBJEC CTS CAN P PUT us in toouch with thhe past in thhis direct an
nd immediatte way. But they also help
h us to a more m
compleex understannding of thee past. Therre is a certaiin paradox that
t surroun nds them. Thhey seem prrecise and fixed,
f
literally
y tangible. W
When so muuch about th he past – esspecially thee Irish past – is conteste
ted, physicaal things seeem to
providee secure ancchors in history. They ought
o to maake things simpler.
s And d yet, whenn you actually examine any
object, this appareent simplicitty quickly falls
f away.

Interesting objectss tend to proovoke moree questions tthan they caan answer. There
T are thhe simple qu uestions: whhy and
when were
w they m made? How werew they used?
u Thesee often turn out not to be
b quite so ssimple, espeecially with
objectss of great anntiquity. In the
t case of Ireland,
I whhere much of prehistory y is still obsccure, early objects sommetimes
serve too tell us how
w much we don’t yet know.
k They give us glim mpses of a tangible
t cerrtainty only to keep it beyond
b
our graasp.

And beeyond the baasic questioons is alwayys the largerr one: what did this thin
ng mean whhen it was made?
m As thhe dates
come closer
c to ourr own it beccomes easieer to attemptt an answer, because th he culture beecomes more like our own,
o
and wee have so muuch more innformation. But the farrther we reaach back in time
t the moore we are reminded off the
inescap
pable fact thhat an objecct is mute without
w its coontext.

Whether it’s a silvver tea urn from

f Georgiian Dublin oor an illumiinated page of the Bookk of Kells, a button froom
Vikingg Dublin or a gold disc from the brronze age, aan Ib Jorgennsen dress or a stone-agge mace heaad from Knoowth, it
carries its own coddes of meanning. It exprresses somee kind of pow
wer, religio
ous, political
al or econom
mic. It suggeests a
place in
n the worldd: that of its owner and that of thosse whom it was
w intendeed to impresss.

Objects don’t just have storiees; they tell stories. Butt what they said to theirr contemporraries may be
b very diffferent
from what
w they noow say to uss.

FOR THIS
T VERY Y reason historians wou uld tend to bbe sceptical of the idea of a historyy of Ireland in 100 objeects.
Historyy is based abbove all on documents: the writtenn word reveeals not just actions butt intentions.. Texts openn up
contextts. Mere objjects, on thee other hand d, are seldom
m eloquent in themselv ves. The fish
sh trap with which we start
s
our serries on this ppage, for exxample, is an
n amazing oobject – butt only if sommeone tells yyou what itt is and how
w
extraorrdinary is itss survival. On
O its own iti looks likee a bunch off sticks stucck in a slab oof turf.
No onee would disppute this. Evven archaeo ologists willl stress that the objects they uncovver, howeveer beautiful, are of
little usse without ttheir wider context,
c a context that is usually provided
p by the scientisst or the histtorian. Yet there
are at least two goood reasons for starting g with objeccts and usingg them to skketch the deevelopment of human
societiees and cultuures on this island.

One is the very quuality of immmediacy thaat a significaant object carries.

c The digital age we inhabit seems to make
m
physicaal things lesss importantt, but it doees the same for time and
d sequence. On the inteernet everytthing seemss to
exist to
ogether simuultaneouslyy. The idea of o chronologgy, of the way
w one thin ng follows aanother, is losing its graasp.
Teacheers, even at third level, will attest tot the way iin which eveen very brig
ght studentss have a vaggue notion of
o the
chronoology of histtoric events.

Objects, so strikinng in themseelves, can be arranged sso that the unfolding

u of change caan be experienced tangiibly,
especiaally if, as we hope, readders take the opportuniity to go andd see them forf themselvves. (Apart from anythhing
else, th
he National Museum off Ireland and d the other ggreat reposiitories of strriking objeccts are a greeat free resoource in
lean tim
mes.)

The other good reason n for doing this historyy of the islan nd through objects
o
has to do w
with history
y itself. Irelaand, at leastt as much ass any other place,
p
has been aawash with grand
g narratives and eppic historiess, which all come
in competiing versionss.

THE THIN NG ABOUT T these big narratives, tthough, is that they tennd to
fall apart, oor at least to
o get very complicated
c d, when you u scale downn the
field of stuudy. Biograp phy tends too reveal moore ambiguitties than loccal
histories, aand local histories tend d to contain more contradictions thhan
national naarratives.

For this reeason much of recent Irrish history--writing hass tended to

concentratte on the smmall scale an
nd the fine ddetail. This is an admiraable
reaction against thhe inadequacy of the grrand narrativves, but it does
d leave non-historian
n ns feeling somewhat
excluded.

By unffolding a rouugh history of Ireland through

t 1000 objects wee can combiine the virtuues of microohistory – what
w
could be
b more miccro than a siingle thing?? – with a brroad chrono
ological narrrative. We ccan tell a “sstory of Irelland”
that is complex annd ambiguouus but at thee same timee broad and engaging.

We hav ve thereforee chosen 100 remarkable objects, eeach of whiich opens a window onn to an impo ortant momeent in
Irish hiistory. Mostt come from
m the great trove
t of the National Museum
M of Ireland,
I a reesource thatt is itself onee of the
wonderrs of Irelandd. (The direector, Pat Wallace,
W and his staff haave been vital to this prroject.)

Others are from a variety of other

o institu
utions. Theyy are not inteended to be the 100 moost remarkaable objects on the
island, or even to bbe a represeentative sammple of the ggreat collecctions. They
y are chosenn simply forr their abilityy to
illumin
nate momennts of changge, developm ment or crisiis.

We hav ve adopted three simple rules. An “object” is defined as a single maan-made enttity, a definiition that exxcludes
buildin
ngs. The objjects are gennerally pressented chronnologically. And unlesss there is ann overwhelm
ming reasonn to the
contrarry, the objeccts themselvves are acceessible to reeaders in pub
blic institutions or spacces.

If nothing else, thee series should act as a reminder thhat people have
h been on
o this islandd for quite some
s time and
a
have suurvived innuumerable orrdeals and challenges.
c
Meesolith
hic fish
h trap
p, circca 500
00 BC
It doesn’t
d lookk like much:: some smalll,
smo ooth interw
woven sticks embedded in the
turff from a bogg at Clowannstown, in Co
C
Meeath. Its disccovery was a side effecct of the
great Irish booom: it lay in the path off the
M3 3 motorway .

Butt at the end of the last ice

i age the bogb
wass a lake. Thhe woven stiicks are an
astoonishing surrvival, part of a conicaal trap
useed by early IIrish peoplee to scoop fiish
fromm the lake oor catch theem in a weirr.
Raddiocarbon teests date itss creation too
betwween 5210 and 4970 BC. B

Thee delicacy oof the work has surviveed the

milllennia. Nim mble hands interlaced
i y
young
twigs of alder and birch, gathered
g froom the
edgge of dense woods. Thee warp-and-- weft
techniq
que is quite advanced anda similar to
t the way oof weaving cloth that would
w be dev
eveloped muuch later in human
history
y. The Irish ttrap could be
b called a classic
c desiggn: similar ones
o are stilll in use aroound the wo
orld.

The peeople who m made this traap were adeept at using w what was arround them m. They usedd saplings to
o make circuular
tent-lik
ke huts. Theey turned fliint and cherrt stones intoo knives, arrrow heads and
a hand axxes. They fo oraged, hunnted and
fished, gradually mmaking a huuman mark on what hadd been an outpost o of un
ntouched naature.

In humman terms Irreland is a very

v new couuntry. Receent finds sug
ggest the mo
ovement off our speciess out of Afriica
may haave begun m more than 1225,000 yearrs ago. Nortth America was extensiively settledd 13,000 yeears ago. Buut there
is no evvidence of hhuman settllement in Ireeland beforre 8000 BC. Ireland waas a remote iisland. It waas also veryy cold,
with th
he last of its ice ages noot ending un
ntil 10000 B
BC. If small groups of people
p livedd here durinng the warmmer
intervaals, no trace of them has yet been found.
f

When
W hunter--gatherers did
d arrive froom
Brritain, they ffound a den
nsely foresteed
lanndscape, a ttemperate climate and an a
ab
bundance off animals, in ncluding willd pigs,
woolves, foxess and bears (though nott yet
deeer). Brown trout, salmon and eel werew
ab
bundant in riivers and laakes. It is noot
accidental thaat the earliest settlemennts yet
ideentified, at M
Mount Sand del, in Co Derry,
D
and Loough Boora,, in Co Offaaly, were clo
ose to waterr: 70 per cen
nt of the bones found aat Lough Bo oora were frrom
fish.

The peeople who mmade the trapp almost ceertainly movved with thee seasons, fo ollowing theeir best sou urces of foodd. They
would not have seeen themselvves as belon nging to a laarge, overarrching groupp. Yet the fl
flint tools th
hey made weere
graduaally becominng distinctivve and diffeerent from thhose in Brittain. Slowly
y and unconnsciously, Irreland was
emergiing as a partticular hum
man space.
Cerremon
nial Axe,
A 36 600 BC
C
Even n now, its shheen and coolour are maagnetically
allurring, the jad
de green surfrface, mottleed with darkker
veins and glimm mers of lightht, polished to
t a high shheen.
The shape is beautifully baalanced betw ween sharp edges
e
and elegant
e curvves. It was oonce though ht that it muust have
come from Chin na. But if it looks exotiic and mysteerious
now, 5,000 yearrs ago in Ireeland it wou uld have seeemed
astonnishing.

The jadeite
j axe,, from the EErris peninsuula in Co Mayo,
M
was never used to cut anythhing. It wass always a raare
object, made to enhance thee prestige of o its owner.. We
now know just how h exotic this one waas: in 2003, it was
blished that the axe cam
estab me from wh hat was thenn an
extraaordinarily distant
d sourrce: a quarry
y high in Mount
M
Visoo in the Italian Alps. It rrequired en
normous labour to
minee and transp port it. And it was alreaady old – the
manu ufacture of these speciaalist axes ennded aroundd 4,000
BC.

The axe tells us two big thiings. One iss that Irelandd was
alreaady part of a European--wide netwo ork. It traveelled
first to northwesstern Francee, where it was
w polisheed.
Then n it made itss way, eitheer directly or through Britain,
B
to west Mayo. AndA similarr jadeite axees from Mouunt
Visoo were being g imported iinto Denmaark and Germ many.
The society thatt was emergging in Irelaand was tanggibly
Euroopean, shapeed by contaact with the wider worldd.
Mary y Cahill of the
t Nationaal Museum believes
b thaat the
axe may
m have been given aas part of a “bride“ pricee” or
dowry..

The seccond big thiing is agricuulture. Why

y is this ultrra-prestigiou
us object an
n axe? Becauuse it was axes
a that alloowed
the den
nse woodlannds to be cleeared.

The ax
xe was the syymbol of huuman powerr over naturre. This piecce of Italian n exotica pooints us towards the sinngle
biggestt transformaation in Irishh history: th
he adoptionn of farming
g shortly afteer 4,000 BC
C.

It is tem
mpting to seee the jade axe
a as evideence of new
w, Neolithic people com
ming to Irelaand and brin
nging the
revoluttionary ideaa of farmingg with them.

Certainnly, since thhe wild anceestors of wh

heat, barley,, cattle and sheep did not
n exist on tthe island, they
t had to be
introduuced from thhe outside. But
B we simp ply do not kknow how this
t process happened, whether it was w a slow
evolutiion or whethher it came as a packag ge with neww settlers. Thhe scarce ev
vidence tendds to suggesst a slow process –
like thee long progrress of the axe
a itself fro
om Italy to Ireland.

What we
w do know
w is that agriiculture chaanged everytthing. It tran
nsformed th
he landscappe, with the clearing of trees to
make way
w for cereeals and passture.

The inttroduction oof domestic beasts doub bled the nummber of larg ge mammall species onn the island. Farming crreated
larger-scale settledd communitties with a strong
s sensee of territory
y and ownerrship. And iit created ch
hieftains ricch
enoughh to own a ffabulously exotic
e objecct.
Neo
olithicc bow
wl, c 35
500 BC
C
The bowl is simmple enoughh, very darrk with burrnished
surfa
aces and reelatively cruude lattice--pattern
deco
orations. It was probaably used fo or drinkingg and
simillar vessels have been found elsew where in Irreland.

Yet, because of the contextt in which itt was foundd, this

every
yday objectt is extraorddinarily eloq quent. It tellls us a
greatt deal aboutt the lives off some of th
he earliest Irrish
farm
mers.

It waas discovereed along witth remains of o three othher pots

in 19
992 in a smaall cave in AAnnagh, norrth Co Limeerick,
that contained
c th
hree full hum
uman skeleto ons, two othher sets
of paartial remain
ns, various aanimal bones and a flinnt blade
and arrowhead.
a The pots teell us that th
he people weere
farmers. The otherr objects telll us that theey were alsoo hunters an
nd warriors.

Two biig things thuus emerge from

f this an
ncient gravee.

One is the reality tthat the devvelopment of o agriculturre was accom mpanied by y considerabble violencee. The otherr is that
it didn’’t happen alll at once, thhat socially and culturaally people retained
r theeir links to aan older, wilder way off life.

Clearinng land wass hard work:: the skeleto

ons, which aare all thosee of men, sh o vigorous lives
how the weaar and tear of
and thee carrying oof heavy weights. This hard-won
h teerritory had
d to be defennded, and coonversely offered
o an
attractiive prize forr outsiders.

The meen who werre chosen foor burial at Annagh

A seem m to have been
b veterann local chammpions or heroes. Theyy had
surviveed a long tim
me: two of them
t were into
i their 500s when theey died – perhaps 20 yeears older th han the norm m. And
they haad survived serious vioolence. Two had seriouss head injurries, one a broken
b nosee, one a fractured rib. Inn one
case, th
he blow to tthe skull waas delivered
d with such fforce that itt must have come from m something like a slinggshot.
Beside the plain ddomesticity ofo the bowl, there are tthe vestiges of brutal sttruggles.

The graave dates frrom the sam

me era as thee grand passsage tombs such as New wgrange, buut may refleect the
continu
uation of oldder culturall practices. In
I this regarrd, the carefful arrangem
ment of hunnter’s apparaatus (blade and
arrowhhead) with a selection of
o animal bo ones is partiicularly reso
onant. The animal
a bonees were brought speciaally to
the cav
ve, and theyy represent both
b the oldd, wild worldd and the neew order off agriculturee.

On the one hand, tthere are boones from a bear, a wollf, a wild bo
oar and a deer – creaturres of the fo
orest. On thee other,
there are bones off sheep and cattle
c – the domestic b easts raised
d by farmerss.

Raghnaall Ó Floinnn of the Nattional Museum, who le d the excav vation at Annnagh, believves that thiss arrangemeent is
deliberrate and indicates a cultture that is still
s in the m
midst of a lo
ong transitio
on.

Farmin
ng was the ddominant way of life, but b the call oof the wild was
w still heard. Even aas they clearred land andd
herded
d cattle, thesse local herooes may stilll have thouught of them
mselves as prroud hunterrs.
Flin
nt maaceheaad, 3300-28800 BC
C
Thiss ceremoniaal macehead d, found benneath the eaastern chambber
tommb at the greeat passage tomb
t at Knoowth, in thee Boyne Vallley, is
one of the finesst works of art to have survived fro om Neolithiic
Euroope. The un nknown artist took a pieece of very hard pale-ggrey
flintt, flecked with
w patches of brown, aand carved each e of its six
s
surffaces with diamond
d shaapes and sw
wirling spiralls. At the frront
theyy seem to foorm a human n face, withh the shaft hole
h as a gapping
mouuth.

If it was made in i Ireland, the

t object suuggests thatt someone on
o the
islannd had attaiined a very high
h degreee of technical and artisttic
sophhistication.

Thee archaeolog gist Joseph Fenwick

F haas suggested
d that the precision
of thhe carving could
c have been
b attaineed only with
h a rotary drrill, a
“maachine very similar to th hat used to apply the suurface decooration
to laatter-day preestige objeccts such as WWaterford Crystal”.
C If this
t is
so – and it is haard to underrstand how tthe piece co ould have been
madde otherwisee – the techn nology preddates that ussed in the cllassical
worrld by 2,000 0 years.

ombs tells uus something about the society

The asssociation off this extraoordinary worrk with onee of the greaat passage to
that constructed thhose endurinngly awe-innspiring monnuments. It was rich en nough to vaalue highly specialised
s skills
and arttistic innovaation. And it
i was becomming increaasingly hieraarchical, with an elite ccapable of controlling
c l
large
human n and physiccal resources.

Knowtth and the otther great toombs were statements.

s As the archhaeologist Alison
A Sheriidan puts it,, “Quite sim
mply,
they were designeed to be the largest, most elaboratee and most ‘expensive’ monumentss ever built.” The inserrtion of
a fabullous object llike the maccehead addeed to the sennse that they
y were “a means
m for coonspicuous consumptioon,
designeed to expresss and enhaance the presstige of rivaal groups”.

This prrestige was asserted in the tombs in

i three wayys. One wass the possession of awee-inspiring objects
o like this
one. Thhe second wwas the use of astrologiical knowleddge to demo onstrate a liink with thee celestial world
w and the
passage of the seaasons, what Sheridan caalls a hotlinee to the god
ds. A phallu
us-shaped sto tone, also fo
ound at Knoowth,
suggests that fertillity rituals were
w part off this mystiqque.

The lasst aspect of this elite prrestige was the demonsstration of in

nternationall connectionns. While sm
mall tombs like
that in Annagh (seee last weekk’s object) honoured
h lo cal heroes, the great tombs were sself- conscioously Europpean.
There are
a strong pparallels bettween the to ombs and paassage gravees on the Ibberian peninnsula and in northwest France.
F

The lik
kelihood is nnot that the tomb-buildders came frrom these pllaces but that they weree part of a network
n of
Atlantiic connectioons. Alreadyy in Ireland a strong sennse of the lo
ocal coexistted with a ddesire to be seen as partt of the
wider world.
w
Neo
olithicc hand
dbag, 3800-2500
0 BC

It lookss at first like a piece off a rough, grreenish matt from a 197
70s student flat. In fact it is a 5,000
0-year-old
handbaag.

Found in a bog in Twyford, Co C Westmeaath, it was mmade by coiiling long sllivers of woood into spirrals that weere then
bound together wiith lighter grass-like maaterial. Nexxt the two siides were woven
w togethher along a seam, and handles
h
of plaitted straw w
were added. ThisT would have madee for a circullar purse-lik ke bag, abouut 40cm in diameter,
d w a
with
narroww opening att the top. It was
w probab bly dyed to ggive it a splash of colouur. It gives uus a glimpsse into the
everydday life of eaarly Irish faarmers. Thou
ugh we cannnot know fo or sure, therre is every cchance that it was madee and
used byy a woman.

Similarr bags have been foundd around thee world: thee technique goes back to the Middlle East arou und 4800 BC C and
is still used
u by inddigenous culltures. In faact, the best way to get a sense of the Twyfordd bag is to lo
ook at a verry
similarr but intact sspecimen (rright) that iss also in thee National Museum
M of Ireland.
I It coomes from 19th-centurry
Aborig ginal Austraalia.

The haandbag is ressonant becaause it takess us back intto the day-tto-day world d of Irish peeople in thee fourth
millennnium BC. M Most of whaat survives from
f this eraa is made of hard stonee and tends tto be associiated with ritual,
r
death and
a power. IIt has the drrama of violence and m mystery. It is also overwwhelminglyy male. To lo ook at a sim
mple
handbaag that mighht have beenn purchased d at an ethniic market in n a modern city
c and imaagine it in th he hands off a
Neolith
hic woman gathering plants
p or nutts is to be reeminded thaat life, then as now, wass dominated d by ordinarry
things and tasks.

What do
d we know w of those orrdinary lives? That theyy were shorrt by our staandards: moost people co ould not exppect to
live beyond their 330s. That peeople were probably
p abbout the sam
me height ass Irish peoplle were in th
he 1930s: thhe male
ons found att Annagh inn Co Limerick were aboout 170cm (5ft
skeleto ( 7in) talll. That (agaain from the Annagh
skeleto
ons) they woorked hard but
b not quitte as hard ass their countterparts in mediaeval
m Irreland. Theey probably wore
clothess of leather aand woven textiles succh as flax.

We kno ow, too, thaat they increeasingly liveed together in relatively substantiaal settlemennts of woodeen houses, lined
l
with wattle
w and daaub and withh thatched roofs.
r Comm munities weere settling down
d for thhe long haull. The Céidee
Fields, in Co Mayyo, for exam mple, were in ntensively aand continuously farmeed for the 5000 years bettween 37000 and
3200 BC.
B By the ttime this bag was madee its owner pprobably liv ved in a socciety that haad a sense off itself as beeing
old.
Bassket earrings, Am
mesbu
ury, ciirca 2300
2 B
BC

A maan in his latee 30s or earrly 40s was buried alonne at

Amesbury, near the great E English mon nument of
Stoneehenge, sommetime arouund 2400-22 200 BC.

Fromm the huge range of objeects in his grave,

g he haad
consiiderable stattus. The objjects were similar
s to finnds
from the same period in Irelland: barbed and tangeed
arrowwheads, a stone wrist guguard, beakeer-shaped poots. He
even wore gold basket-shap
b ped earringss or hair ornnaments
strikiingly similaar to some inn the Nation
nal Museum m of
Ireland
d in Dublin.

But although we ccan glean a certain

c amoount from thhe artefacts found in Ireeland, they ddon’t tell uss much abouut the
people who ownedd them. In Amesbury,
A owner
o and oobjects were found tog gether, offerring far morre information.
And, allthough we must be caautious in ouur interpretaations, this information
i n is likely allso true of Irreland. Whaat
makes him so signnificant for an understaanding of Iriish prehistoory is where he came frorom and the fact that coopper
knives and other toools in the grave
g show that he wass a metalwo orker.

By studdying the chhemical isottopes in his teeth, scienntists have established

e that the so-ccalled Ameesbury Archher
grew up
u in the Alppine region of southern n Germany oor Switzerlaand, where the mining and use of copper and gold
had lon
ng been knoown. Andrew w Fitzpatricck of Wesseex Archaeollogy suggessts, from thee evidence of o some of the
t
grave goods,
g that hhe probablyy made his way
w to Englland via sou uthern Francce, the Iberiian peninsula and the
Atlantiic.

Why does he mattter for Irelannd? Because the Amesbbury Archeer provides crucial
c eviddence about the biggest
developpment afterr the arrival of agricultu
ure: the minning and shaaping of meetals. There is no disputte that the arrival
a
of metaalworking, aaround 2400 BC, is lin nked to new cultural praactices charracterised byy the kind of
o objects foound in
the archer’s grave and by the practice off single ratheer than com
mmunal burial.

What is not clear aabout the arrrival of metalworking,, though, is,, as Mary Cahill of the National Museum
M putss it,
“whethher it was brrought by people on thee move lookking for new w sources of metals or whether it’s a transmisssion of
inform
mation as oppposed to peoople. But th he fact that tthe Amesbu
ury Archer turns
t out noot to have beeen born in
southerrn Britain annd has traveelled all thee way from ccentral Euro
ope is indicative of som
me movemeent of people”.

We kno ow that by aabout 2400 BC Ross Issland in the Killarney lakes was esstablished aas perhaps th he most impportant
copperr mine in noorthwestern Europe. Th he first Irish evidence of
o metalwork king is thereefore alreaddy quite higghly
develop ped. It is veery unlikelyy that this ex
xpertise emeerged sponttaneously. AsA Fitzpatricck puts it, “Ross has too be
develop ped by peopple who alreeady have th he knowleddge. You can n’t just mak
ke that up.” It is clearly
y no coinciddence
that thee pottery fouund at Rosss is of the neew beaker ttype. A large cultural shhift is underr way in Ireeland, and itt is
associaated with the mining off copper and d gold.

This dooes not meaan that Irelannd was “invvaded” by nnew tribes of
o metalwork kers. But m
migrants from
m central Euurope
and thee Atlantic cooasts of Fraance and Spain almost ccertainly plaayed a key part
p in the eend of Stone Age Irelannd.
Where to see them
m Salisbury Museum,
M England, salisbuurymuseum.o
org.uk
Paiir of ggold diiscs, 2200-2
2 2000 BC
B

The woorking of m
metals may have
h come late to Irelannd, but the island
i then became
b onee of the mosst importantt metal-
produccing centres in Europe. Ireland had
d large resouurces of cop pper and gold: new souurces of weaalth and pow
wer.

Early smiths
s madee copper axees and tradeed them to B
Britain. Thaat this trade worked botth ways is evident
e from
m the
developpment of brronze objectts. The tin that
t was allooyed with copper to maake the bronnze probablly came from m
Devon and Cornw wall.

But it was
w gold, thhen as now, that had thee brightest aaura of rituaal significannce. The woorking of metal was a cultural
c
as welll as an econnomic activiity. Even intto the beginnning of the modern eraa the idea off alchemy – the
transfo
ormation of one substannce into ano other – combbined scien nce with mag gic. In the eearly Bronzee Age the abbility
of metaalworkers too turn crudee rock into objects
o of ddazzling brigghtness musst have imbuued them with
w some seense of
the magical. This m must have been
b especially true off gold, not leeast becausee it was extrremely rare at this timee. The
people who sifted gold in streeams and riv vers in the M Mourne Mo ountains hadd searched hhard for a material
m theyy knew
to be especially prrecious.

There is
i also a nattural connecction between the brighhtness of go
old and the power
p of thee sun. In Indo-Europeaan
languag ges, includiing the one spoken in Bronze
B Age Ireland, thee word for “god”
“ is derrived from a root meanning
“shine””. We know w from the older
o Irish megalithic
m mmense meaaning. That some
toombs that riituals of the sun had im
of this was now foocused on gold objects is suggesteed by the pro oduction early on of deecorated disscs of sheet gold.

They were
w probabbly stuck to a backing material
m andd may have been worn as marks off high politiical status, high
h
religiou
us status or both.

These discs
d from TTydavnet, inn Co Monaghan, are byy far the big ggest and most
m sophistiicated yet found;
fo their crosses
are elab
borated withh rows of dots,
d lines an
nd zigzag paatterns, creaated using a range of teechniques.

The geeneral belieff is that the discs relate to a cult off the sun andd that the crruciform shaapes of the design are
intendeed to represent its life-ggiving rays. There is litttle direct ev
vidence of this
t cult in IIreland, butt rock-art im
mages
from coontemporarry Denmarkk show clearr images of people worrshipping th he sun, whicch is represeented in the same
way ass the Irish diiscs.

The sun, in this cuult, may havve been a gooddess ratheer than a god. One interrpretation oof the gold discs
d is that they
were placed as sym mbolic breaasts on the chest
c of a kiing, creatingg an image that
t fused thhe leader with
w the life-giving
deity. If
I this is so, the discs belong to an Irish traditiion of assocciating kingship with thhe sun that continued
c loong
after th
he arrival off Christianitty.
Cog
ggalbeeg golld hoa
ard, 22300-2
2000 BC
B

Two yeears ago this month garrdaí in Rosccommon annnounced that they had recovered, from a rubb bish skip in
Dublin
n, some rathher unusual objects.
o Wrrapped in a ssheet of pap
per, and weiighing just 770g betweeen them, theey had
been in
n a safe stolen from a pharmacy
p in
n Strokestow
wn. The thieeves had enttirely misseed them.

What the gardaí reecovered froom the smellly skip werre an early Bronze
B Agee lunula – a crescent-sh haped collarr – and
two goold discs of tthe kind thaat this colum
mn featured last week. The lunula (the word w was first app
plied in the 18th
centuryy and is Lattin for “littlee moon”) was
w made byy beating go old into a very thin sheeet on which decorationss were
incised
d or impresssed with connsiderable skill. Like otther lunulaee, it is a very
y clever objject, makingg a very
impressive and larrge-looking token of hiigh status frrom a relativvely small amount
a of ggold.

naments thaat were dug up from a bog

The orn b at Cogggalbeg in 19
945 and barely escapedd reburial in
n a dump in Dublin
u a unique assemblagee of objects.
make up

“It’s th
he first time ever that we
w have an association
a bbetween thee discs and the
t lunula, bbecause thee discs woulld be
consideered amonggst the earlieest gold ornnaments andd the lunula as coming a little bit laater,” says Mary
M Cahilll of the
Nation nal Museum m of Ireland. The appearrance of disscs and a lun
nula togetheer opens up the possibility that theey may
have fuunctioned ass part of thee same set of
o regalia, w
with the disccs representiing the sun and the lunnula the mooon.

The vaast majority of gold lunnulae – moree than 80 off the 100-plu us found in western Euurope – comme from Irelland.
They are
a thus the first strong evidence we w have of a distinctively Irish culttural form. IInstead of Irreland receiiving
influen
nces from abbroad, the process
p in th
his case seemms to work the other wayw around: Irish lunulaae spread too
Britain
n, and their sshape is coppied in neckklaces of othher materialls, like jet and amber.

But jusst as the Cogggalbeg hoaard thereforre tells us soomething ab bout the inteernational nnature of Irissh culture at
a this
time, itt also pointss to its intennse localism
m. Eamonn K Kelly of thee museum notes that “w when we reccovered thatt
materiaal, and founnd out wheree it was from m, I went annd looked at
a a map”.

It was buried
b on thhe boundaryy that still marked
m the ddivision bettween the twwo main braanches of th
he O’Connor clan
in the Middle
M Agees. This, he says, is typiical. When ancestral ob bjects are fo
ound “almosst every onee of them iss on a
boundaary that apppears on a modern
m map,, most oftenn on a baronny boundary when you fiind Bronze Age
y. But also w
and Iro
on Age mateerial, very often
o you finnd stone objjects as welll, so some of
o these bouundaries go all the wayy back.”
Bro
onze A
Age du
ugoutt canooe, circca 220
00 BC
C

It is so long – 15m
m in all – thaat it cannot be photograaphed as a whole
w inside the Nationnal Museum
m of Irelandd. The
best immage goes baack to 19022, when it was
w taken in through thee wide gatess of Leinsteer House. It was discovvered
the preevious year iin a boggy area
a that haad once beenn a small lak ke at Lurgaan, Addergooole, Co Gallway.

This huuge boat tells us somethhing not jusst about the people who o made it buut also abouut the landsccape in which they
lived. The
T oak thaat was hollow wed out to create
c it waas far biggerr than any th
hat could grrow in Irelaand today. The
T
canoe is
i thus tangiible evidencce of climatte change. Itt comes from an Irelan nd that had tto be signifiicantly warmmer
than it is now to ennable such huge
h trees to
t grow. It iis more thann a metre wide, suggestting that thee trunk of thhe oak
was tw
wice that diaameter. As a vestige of a warmer, ddrier island,, the Lurgan n boat may ppoint as mu uch to our fuuture as
to our past.
p

It is tem
mpting to immagine the canoe
c as thee type of veessel that bro
ought migraants to Irelaand and carrried trade beetween
the islaand and its nneighbours. But would this type off vessel eveer have beenn stable enoough for seaafaring? Thee
generall assumptioon is that boats for long
g- distance trtravel were made
m from skins and w wood, not un nlike curracchs, and
that smmall dugout canoes werre used on laakes and rivvers.

The Luurgan canoee, though, iss far too big to have beeen used for fishing or ordinary
o trannsport on th
he small lakke
where it was foundd. The task of hollowin ng out such an immensse tree trunk k with stonee adzes wou uld have beeen
mely laboriouus, even witth the carefu
extrem ful use of firre to burn aw
way some ofo the woodd – much mo ore effort thhan
would be justifiedd by mundanne uses. Eam monn Kellyy of the Natiional Museu um believess, therefore, that its purrpose
was ceremonial diisplay. “Thiis isn’t someething that yyour averag ge farmer kn
nocked up tto do a spot of fishing. It’s
probab
bly to do witth the rulingg elite, or th w such a thing. It has a touch of the late-Neoolithic
he ruling maan if there was
Porsch
he about it. A
Among the Maori or th he peoples oof northwesttern Americca dugout caanoes of thiis scale had a
purpose beyond m mere functioonality – sho owing off too the neighb bours being the obviouss one.”

There is,
i though, aanother possibility. Som me archaeollogists havee argued thaat a series off paired holles in the caanoe
suggest that it wass fitted withh some kind of stabiliseers or outrig
ggers. If thiss were the ccase it could
d have been used
for morre extensivee travel. Eitther way, the canoe remminds us thaat, on a denssely forestedd island of mighty
m oakks, boats
kept alive the netw
works that bound
b comm munities toggether.
Bro
onze A
Age fu
unerarry potts, 190
00-1300 BC
C

Sometiime in the eearly Bronzee Age, Irish h people beggan to bury their dead in single graaves. This suggests som mething
about their
t attitudee to death and,
a perhapss more impoortantly, hin nts at their attitude
a to liife. A notion
n is emerginng that
what iss significantt is not just the life of the communnity or of po
olitical or reeligious leadders. Ordinaary lives maatter.
Not onnly are the ddead given ana individuaal burial, buut the idea allso takes ho
old that theyy will continnue in somee other
form.

“Theree seems to bbe a change,,” says Eam

monn Kelly oof the Natio onal Museum m of Irelandd, “from thee more comm munal
approaach of the grreat megalitthic tombs to a more inndividualistiic approach. This suggeests that theere was som
me sort
of a ch
hange in howw society was organised – more sppecialisation n, perhaps.””

These pots
p are am mong the maany “food veessels” that survive from this periood, some off which are vase-shaped
v d, some
bowl-shaped. The abstract geeometric deccoration on the bowls is
i very simillar to that oon Irish metaalwork of thhe
same period,
p especcially on the gold lunulae. On the base of som
me pots is a starburst paattern that may
m relate too a sun
cult.

The veessels were mmade to be buried with h the dead inn small flat graves that were usuallly built of stone.
s The graves
g
are of a trapezoidaal shape andd are just larrge enough to hold the body, whicch is curled in a foetal position,
p annd the
accomp panying potts.

Adding w awareness of the indivvidual is an

g to this sennse of a new n apparent ch hoice of bur
urial forms. AsA well as the
t
foetal burial,
b it waas possible to
t be cremated. Both foorms occur at the same time and inn the same cemeteries,
c
suggesting that thee choice waas not a marrk of social, generational or genderr distinctionn. Strikingly y, the Bronzze Age
vesselss found at TTara, which presumably y accompannied dead kin ngs on theirr journey too the afterliffe, are no diffferent
from thhe rest. Presstige objectss like jet neccklaces are rarely foun
nd in the graaves: for thee most part the
t dead weere
treated
d equally. “T There’s nothhing to sugg gest,” says KKelly, “that there was another
a formm of burial for the loweer
orders.”

Why were
w the deaad arranged as if they were
w curled uup in the womb? The obviouso sugggestion is of
o a simple and
a
beautifful metaphoor: the tomb is a womb.. The dead pperson is to be reborn into anotherr life.

The driink or food in the vesseel is meant to sustain thhem on the journey
j from one statee to the otheer.

This teells us two qquite differeent things. One

O is that thhese peoplee were lookiing carefullyly at the hum
man body: they
t
knew the shape off the child inn the womb b. The other is that this capacity to observe huumanity wen nt hand in hand
h
with a desire to traanscend it.
Ta
ara toorcs,, c 12
200 B
BC
Tara torrcs, c 1200 BC:
B IN 18110, a boy digging closee to the
ringed fo
ort known ass the Rath oof the Synodds on the Hiill of
Tara in Co
C Meath fo ound two maagnificent gold
g torcs. They
T
had beenn made with considerabble skill by hammering
h the
edges of a gold bar into
i four thiin flanges ono an anvil and
a
then twissting the wh
hole lot into a circle.

The amount of gold used to mak ake them, th he fact that torcs
t
are a new
w kind of obbject, the tecchnologicall sophisticattion
they requ
uired, and th
he emergencce of Tara itself
i as an
especially importantt ritual centrre all point to a societyy that is
becoming g more commplex.

The largeest of the torcs has a diiameter of about

a 42cm and, if
untwisted d, would exxtend to aboout 167cm. Both
B of them
m have
a strangee extension at
a the end: tthere are some suggestions
that thesee may be male and fem male symbolls.

The abiliity to make these thingss comes witth a period of o

developm ment that maay have beeen stimulateed by the
deterioraation of the Irish
I climatte from abou ut 1200 BC. This
may havee led to con nflict and inssecurity (neew types of
weapons and enclosed settlemeents date fro om this periood)
with th
he emergencce of more powerful
p kin
ngs.

The asssumption iss that torcs were

w worn arounda the nneck, but th
hese ones are large enouugh to havee to be wornn
around
d the waist. TThey could even have been placedd on idols. The T strong likelihood,
l hhowever, is that, as Eam
monn
Kelly of
o the Natioonal Museum m puts it, “tthese objectts were regaalia worn by
y the kings oof Tara. How do we knnow?
Well Farmer Joe w wasn’t wearring this kin nd of stuff. Y
You’ve got to be top do og to get yoour hands onn this kind of
o loot.
These are
a the finesst objects of the period d.”

The torrcs take oveer from the older

o lunulaae. Whereass the latter were
w a very clever wayy of making the most off a
small amount
a of pprecious gold, the torcs seem to be designed to t amount of gold useed to create them.
o show off the
They are
a intendedd for ostentaatious displaay.

Tara haad been an iimportant centre

c he torcs were made, butt their awesome qualityy
for three millennnia before th
suggests that it hadd become considerablyy more so.

“You get
g the sensee,” says Kellly, “that Taara was not just about political
p pow
wer or evenn religious power.
p It’s a
spirituaal power. Laater on in thhe Gaelic world,
w this iss where everrything connects to thee other world. This is what
w
gives thhe kings theeir authorityy. There’s already
a a sennse of that in
i these objeects. They iidentify the guy who’s
wearinng them as thhe person who
w connectts this worldd to the otheer world.”
Mo
ooghau
un hooard, circa
c 8800 BC
B
A littlee under 3,0000 years ago someone in
Irelandd was very, very rich. In I March 18854 a
gangerr ordered soome navviess working on o the
constru uction of thhe West Claare Railway near
Newm market-on-Feergus to straaighten a dyyke
runninng close to th the small lak
ke of Moogghaun.
They shifted
s a stoone and founnd a small rough
r
chamb ber with a fllagstone on top. When they
opened d it they unccovered thee largest hoaard of
Bronze Age gold objects eveer found in western
w
or nortthern Europpe.

The naavvies filledd their pock

kets and “dissposed
each of
o his share tto travellingg dealers”. Many
M
pieces were melteed down, bu ut the evidennce
suggessts there weere 138 braccelets, six coollars,
possib
bly two torcss and four other
o pieces: 150
objects, all of goldd. Altogeth
her they weigghed
about five kilos, aan amazing amount of the t
most precious
p meetal for one person
p or faamily
group to possess.

The 29
9 objects thaat survive, split
s betweeen the
Nation
nal Museum m of Ireland in i Dublin an
nd the Britiish Museumm, in Londonn, are not esspecially rem markable inn
themseelves. The ggold collars are distinctiive but not as well worrked as man
ny others froom this periiod. Most off the
hoard consists
c of rrelatively siimple bracelets, whose more or lesss uniform design
d has pprompted su uggestions that
t
they may
m have beeen merely a way of storring the golld. What is extraordina
e ry is the sheeer scale off the wealth they
represeent.

Moogh haun had a llarge and prrominent hilll fort, with three huge,, roughly co
oncentric stoone rampartts enclosingg about
12 hecttares and coommandingg wide viewss of the Shaannon estuarry. The fortt may have bbeen a rituaal centre serrving as
the cap
pital of the w
wider regionn. Pollen an
nalysis fromm Mooghaun n lake shows that the arrea was inteensively farm
med at
the tim
me. The wealth of the hooard suggessts, howeverr, that the Shannon
S estu
uary was alsso being used for fishinng and
trading
g.

There must
m have bbeen a long period of sttability and prosperity in which su uch riches coould be acccumulated.
Equally
y, those whho controlledd this wealth
h almost ceertainly had the sanction n of militaryy force: an increasing amount
a
of weap
ponry fromm this time, including
i th
he first Irishh swords, haas been foun
nd.

There are
a other huuge hoards from
f this peeriod, notab ly one of 20
00 bronze objects
o m Dowris, neear Birr, in Co
from
Offaly.. Were theyy buried as votive
v offeriings to the ggods or merrely for safee keeping? T
The Moogh haun hoard’ss siting
near a lake
l might ppoint to thee former, buut the stone cchamber in which it waas buried suuggests that the stuff was
w
meant to
t be accesssible to its owners.
o

Either way, the MMooghaun hooard tells uss of an Irelanand characteerised, in thee words of tthe archaeologists Anddrew
Halpinn and Conor Newman, as a “one of old
o wealth, sstability and d cultural ho omogeneityy”. In a literral sense, at least,
this waas a golden age. Like alll such agess, it was nott to last.
Gleeninsh
heen gold
g gorget
g t, circa
a 800--700 B
BC

The marks
m that run
r throughh the ridges on the rightt hand
side of this dazzzling gold coollar show that
t it was roughly
r
bent in two befoore it was thhrust into a rock
r fissuree in the
Burren, in Co Clare, where it was foun nd by workm men in
19322. This is no
o accident: mmost of the other eight
surviiving examp ples of thesee uniquely Irish
I objectss were
bent in the samee way. Theyy were, it seems,
“decommissioneed” before bbeing buried d. Such wass their
poweer that they had to be bbroken beforre being let out of
the hands
h of their owners.

The Gleninsheen
G n gorget is a technical and artistic
achieevement at the
t apex off goldworkin ng in the Euurope of
its tim
me. It was made
m by appplying a ran nge of technniques:
repou usse, chasin
ng, raising, sstamping, tw wisting andd
stitchhing. The diiscs at the teerminals off the collar are
a
decorated with spiral
s patterrns of extraoordinary finnesse.
Heav vily concenttrated in Muunster, this kind of worrk can
only have come from a highhly evolved d society witth a
popu ulation dense enough too support sp pecialist artiists,
sufficieently settledd to developp its own sophisticated traditions.

There is
i evidence,, indeed, thaat gorgets liike this one may be an ultraluxurio
ous and supperfine expreession of a
contemmporary Eurropean fashiion. On maiinland Euroope at this tiime one of the
t most impmportant high h-status objects is
the bro
onze cuirasss, a piece off armour thaat fits the whhole torso. This
T highly decorated aarmour is evvidence of the
t
emergeence of a waarrior caste with great prestige.
p

These bronze
b cuirasses are noot found in Ireland.
I Butt Mary Cah hill of the Naational Musseum of Irelland has poiinted
out dettailed similaarities in strructure and decoration
d bbetween thee Irish gorgets and the European cuirasses:
c thhe
raised lines
l on thee Gleninsheeen collar maatch the linees on the arm mour that in ndicate the wwarrior’s riibs, for exammple;
the circcular discs mmimic the breast
b and nipples. Whaat we have, then, is a very specificc Irish version of the syymbols
of a Euuropean warrrior cult. Inn Europe thee object is bbronze and takest the litteral shape oof the warriior’s body. InI
Ireland
d it is gold aand abstract. Who need ds ordinary bbronze wheen the overw whelming syymbolic pow wer of gold can be
harnesssed? The goorget may be b a more seelf-consciouusly artistic representatiion of a Eurropean stylee, but it
nonethheless belonggs to the coommon ideaal of a warri or elite. A rare r rock carving from southwesteern Spain in this
period shows a waarrior with sword,
s T shield has a highly distinctive V-shaped notch.
shielld, spear andd chariot. The n
Distincctive, that iss, except forr the fact thaat the only sshield of thiis kind was found at Clloonbrin, neear Abbeyshhrule,
in Co Longford.
L T
The gorget, therefore,
t iss a peculiarlly Irish and especially refined exppression of a warrior cuult that
extended far beyonnd Ireland.
Casstledeerg brronze cauld
dron, 700-60
7 00 BC
C

Christianitty was not the

t first
Mediterrannean religioon to find itss way
to Ireland.

The most ffamous Irish h legend, thhe Táin

Bó Cualing nge, centres on the strugggle for
control of a magical bull.
b It thus brings
us distant eechoes of th he presencee in
Bronze Agge Ireland of o a bull cultt that
itself origiinated milleennia beforee in the
eastern Aeegean Sea. Versions
V off this
cult spreadd through much
m of western
Europe, annd it is not surprising
s thhat it
should findd a home in n Ireland’s cattle-
c
rearing socciety.

This magnnificent bronnze cauldronn,

found in a bog in Castlederg, Co
Tyrone, is crafted fromm offset bannds of
sheet bronze
b held in place by rows of con nical rivets.. Like aboutt 15 others of
o this type found in Irreland, it is based
b
on a Grreek or orieental prototyype. It could
d be seen sim mply as an expression of a chieftaain’s bountyy in feastingg his
followeers. But it aalmost certainly had a ritual
r as welll as a social significance.

The cau uldron is beest understoood in assocciation with two other kinds
k of objects from thhe same perriod that alsso
featuree in a huge hhoard foundd at Dowris,, Co Offaly.. There are bronze
b hornns that, wheen blown, prroduce “a deep
d
bass noote, resemblling the belllowing of a bull”. Therre are also so-called
s cro
otals, pear-sshaped bron
nze objects that
t
look likke hand greenades but were
w surely meant to reepresent the bull’s scrottum. Togethher, horns, crotals
c and
cauldroons were obbjects sacredd to the bulll cult.

Cauldrrons like this one are att the root off the folk talles of “cauld
drons of pleenty” that suurvived for millennia inn
Europee. But that pplenty depennded on the reign of thee proper kin ng. Eamonn n Kelly of thhe National Museum off
Ireland
d suggests thhat the bull cult in Irelaand was clo sely associaated with th
he choice off king.

The buull was sacriificed and thhe meat coooked in the ccauldron. A priest ate the
t flesh andd went into a sleep in which
w
he dreaamed the ideentity of thee proper kin
ng.

What we
w don’t knnow is whethher this cultt went as farr as it would d do later onn – includinng human saacrifice. A
cauldroon found in Gundestrupp, in Denmaark, but probbably origin nating in Frrance, comees from abouut 500 yearss after
the onee from Castllederg. But is has detaiiled represeentations of the Irish deities Manannnán, the Daagda and Medb,
M
and shoows an elabborate bull-sslaying rituaal. It shows a giant god
d holding a human
h upsiide-down ov
ver a cauldrron.
The action has beeen variouslyy interpreted d as the humman being drowned,
d haaving his or her blood drained
d and
collected, or beingg plucked frrom the cauldron to be reborn.

We can n’t know whhether thesee rituals are precisely thhe same as those
t used earlier
e in Ireeland. But the
t basic meeaning
of the cauldron
c is clear. It uniites the big forces of thhe world – power,
p fertillity, proper kingship – with the moost
fa of life: tthe need to eat. A rulerr who can’t guarantee th
basic fact he one has non right to cclaim the otther.
Iron spearhead, 800-675 BC

Where to see it Not yet on display

The past is unpredictable.

This iron spearhead is of a kind familiar enough from the Ireland of 500 AD. Andy Halpin of the National
Museum of Ireland says that it “wouldn’t be out of place in the early medieval period”. The problem is that recent
carbon dating of the remains of its wooden shaft suggests that it may be more than 1,000 years older. If this is so,
it explodes a myth about how the Iron Age came to Ireland.

The long-held belief was that the use of iron in Ireland was a result of the invasion of the Celts. These people are
associated with the development of ironworking in Europe north of the Alps and with a culture named after the
Austrian town of Hallstatt. Greek writers refer to the existence of ‘Keltoi’ in central Europe in the sixth century
BC. The Hallstatt people seem to have been responsible for the westwards spread of ironworking. It seemed
logical that the appearance of iron in Ireland must be evidence of the arrival of these Celts.

No one doubts that the influence of these central Europeans is evident in Irish artefacts from the sixth century BC
onwards. But the process was not one in which the Bronze Age suddenly ended and the Iron Age began. It was
slow and gradual: bronze and iron objects overlap in time. And this remarkable spearhead, found in the River Inny
at Lackan in Co Westmeath, suggests that it may have been even more gradual than everyone has assumed.

Iron corrodes and is very hard to date. So far, iron objects in Ireland have been pretty crude and relatively late,
dating no earlier than 200 BC. The Lackan spearhead is certainly not crude: it is elegant and resonant. “When you
think of the Iron Age and the legends of Cúchulainn,” says Halpin, “this is the type of weapon that people think of
them carrying.”

It is almost freakishly well preserved: it would be unusual to find a weapon from the Middle Ages in such good
condition. It is not an obvious import. And it seems to be very, very old. The radiocarbon tests date the ash shaft
somewhere between 811 and 673 BC. Halpin urges caution, but there is no reason why this date has to be regarded
as wrong.

It’s the combination of this early date and its superb quality that makes this spear so startling. “We are beginning,”
says Halpin, “to get other evidence for ironworking technology at an earlier date than we thought. The idea that
ironworking was happening here in maybe 600 or 700 BC wouldn’t really be disputed any more. But the idea that
they were producing something as nice as this at that period suggests not only that iron was being worked here but
also that it was being worked by very competent smiths much earlier than we think.”

Those smiths were not invading “Celts”. They were part of the same culture that was producing the
dazzling gold and bronze objects we have already seen.
Bro
oighteer boaat, circca 1000 BC
Thhis delightfuul gold boat, just under 20cm
lon
ng but rich iin detail, is a rare thingg in
earrly Irish art:: a realistic depiction of
o
sommething thaat appeared in ordinaryy life.

It is
i a precise model of ann ocean-goiing
vessel, probabbly wooden but possiblly made
of hide. The bboat originally had ninee
ben nches for thhe rowers an
nd 18 oars with
w
rowwlocks, a loong oar for steering
s at the
t
steern, three foorked barge poles, a graappling
on or anchorr and a mastt. This is the kind
iro
of boat in whiich Irish peoople traded with
Britain and weestern Euro ope, bringingg back
not only goodds but also iddeas, technoologies
and d fashions.

Th
he realism oof the boat does
d not meaan,
however, thatt it did not also
a have a
sym
mbolic meaaning. It is the centrepieece of a
hoard of gold objects fou und by the sea
shore at
a the entrannce to Loughh Foyle in Broighter,
B C
Co Derry.

Togethher, the objeects seem too have been a votive off

ffering to thee sea god Manannán
M M
Mac Lir. Thee sea was, as it still
is today
y, an unpreddictable forrce.

Manan nnán, who ruuled an otheerworldly kiingdom butt could ride out over the waves on his chariot,, is the ultim mate
master mariner, im mpervious too the sea’s deadly
d turbuulence. It iss easy to und
derstand whhy those wh
ho sailed in open
boats liike this onee would seekk his help an
nd protectioon.

Apart from
f bjects foundd with it are mostly impports,
the dellight of the boat itself, what is striiking is that the gold ob
includiing two neckk chains thaat come from m the easterrn Mediterrranean, posssibly from R Roman Egyp pt.

Ireland
d, which hadd been the great
g produccer of goldw ringing it in from the ouutside.
work in western Europee, is now bri
What has
h happeneed to the peoople who haad such stagggering weaalth in bronzze and gold?
d? Have they y been displlaced
by thosse who use tthe new meetal, iron?

One poossibility is that the chaange from bronze

b and ggold to iron is evidencee of a shift iin social pow
wer. Those lower
down the
t social sccale start to use the cheeaper iron, cchallenging the dominaance of the eelites that co ontrolled thhe
bronze industry. Itt is striking that most of
o the early iiron objectss in Ireland are practicaal working tools,
t especcially
axes. As
A the archaaeologist Johhn Waddelll puts it, “It is possible that the hew wers of woood rather thaan the yieldders of
swordss were the bbeneficiariess of the new
w iron technoology.” Thiis may be on ne of the reaasons why the
t burial of gold
and bro
onze objectss as offeringgs to the gods largely cceases between 600 and d 300 BC. W When these votive hoarrds
reappear, they are fewer and smaller.
s

Yet it seems
s clearr that afterr these disru
uptions, a n
new elite esstablished itself.
i The bbeauty of this boat su
uggests
that it may have bbeen found ded not on the
t controll of preciou us metals buut on the abbility to tra
ade on the high
seas.
Am
mulet, Old Crogh
C han M
Man, 362-17
75 BC
The dazzzling regaliia that
survivess from ancieent
Ireland suggests thaat
kings haad enormouus
prestigee, both physsical
and spirritual. But at
a least
by the early
e Iron Age,
A
royal poower had beecome
highly conditional.
c The
deal forr the king was
w clear
and bruttal: producee the
goods or
o be rituallyy
slaughteered and
sacrificeed. If the king
could no ot guaranteee peace
and prosperity, he wasw
sent bacck into the land to
which he
h was ritually
wed.

In 2003, shortly aftter a

well-preeserved Ironn Age
body waas found in a bog
in Clon
nycavan, Coo Meath, annother was found
f at Crooghan Hill in
i Co Offaly
y. Both boddies, on closse examinatiion,
had thee marks of hhigh status.

Clonyccavan Man’s hair contaains an impo orted gel. O

Old Croghan n Man has a leather amuulet, decoraated in the
fashion
nable continnental style, on his arm. It represennts the sun, with which h Irish kingsship is closeely associateed.
Both men
m also hadd their nipplles sliced beefore they ddied. Togeth her, these feeatures sugggest that thee men were kings.
k
The kin
ng’s nippless representeed the life-g
giving sun. TTheir cutting suggests that
t their poower was beeing rituallyy
decomm missioned.

Both men
m appear tto have beenn “killed” th hree times: by strangullation, by sttabbing andd by drownin ng. Howeveer
ritualissed, Old Crooghan Man’’s death wass garishly vviolent: he was w bound withw hazel roods threaded through holesh in
his upp per arms, staabbed in thee chest, stru
uck in the neeck, decapittated and cu ut in half. (A
All that has been foundd are his
torso and arms.) B But the violeence was no ot mere sadiism. “This,”” says Eamo onn Kelly oof the Nationnal Museum m of
Irelandd, “isn’t donne for torture or to inflicct pain. It’s a triple killling becausee the goddeess to whomm the sacrificce is
made hash three naatures. She’ss goddess off sovereigntty, of fertiliity and of war w and death th. So they’rre making
sacrificce to her in all her form
ms, and the king
k has to die three deeaths.”

Poignaantly, Old C Croghan Mann has a wou und on his aarm, which he
h lifted insstinctively to try to shieeld himself from
the weaapon with w which he waas stabbed in the chest. Before his death, he wasw fed a ritutual meal off milk and grain:
g
not thee high-statuss meat-baseed diet that is
i revealed bby analysis of his nails but one meeant, rather,, to symboliise the
earth’s fertility.

He hadd been a hugge man, alm most six and a half feet ttall. It is easy to imagin
ne him as a champion or o hero. He was
young and healthyy, and there is little signn that he didd physical labour. The bog where his body is found is cloose to
the foo
ot of the hilll where the kings
k of thee Uí Failge wwere inaugu urated. He was
w killed nnear the sitee where he had
h
becomee king.

This cuulture of bruutal sacrifice may tell us

becamee colder andd wetter. Foood may hav
their cllaim to refleect the view
ws of the oth
u somethinng about the mood of th
he times. In the last cen
nturies BC, Ireland
I
ve been morre scarce. The
T great preestige of kinngs had alw
ways been linnked to
her world. W
When times were bad, this very claaim becamee fatal.
Lou
ughnaashade trum
mpet cc.100 BC
ONNE OF the m most famouus pieces of ancient
scuulpture is Thhe Dying Gaul
G , a Rom
man
coppy of a lost Greek original from arround
220 BC. It is aan arresting
g and deeplyy
mooving imagee of a naked d warrior lyiing on
hiss shield, a gaaping woun
nd in his sidde, his
heaad bowed, aawaiting death. The staatue
was alm
most certainnly commissioned to coommemoratte a Greek victory
v overr the Celtic Galatians and
a as such it i
providees easily thee most mem
morable visu
ual image off the Celts.

The Dyying Gaul iss sometimess called “Thhe Dying Trrumpeter”: coiled
c arounnd the warri
rior’s legs iss a large currved
bronze trumpet. W
We know thaat these trum mpets were used in batttle by Celticc peoples. TThe Roman historian Poolybius
wrote of
o one battlee that “the noise
n of the Celtic hostt terrified th
he Romans; for there we
were countlesss trumpeteers and
horn bllowers and since the whole
w army was
w shoutinng its war crries at the saame time thhere was succh a confuseed
sound that
t the noisse seemed to t come nott only from the trumpetters and the soldiers buut also from the countryyside
which was joiningg in the echoo.”

This spplendid bronnze trumpett, one of fou ur found in a dried-up lakel at Lougghnashade ((“lake of thee treasures””), near
the impportant royaal centre of Emain Maccha, in Co A Armagh, is similar
s to th
he one that llies at the feeet of The Dying
D
Gaul and to those that so terriified the Ro omans. It is an outstand ding piece ofo Celtic art.. The main section of thhe tube
is a maasterpiece off skilled rivveting. The bell
b end is ssuperbly deccorated with h a lotus-buud motif, wh hose originss lie in
Mediteerranean art. The style of o elaboratee curved pattterns is thaat of high Ceeltic art, callled La Tènee, after a sitte in
Switzerland. It is a style that would
w dom
minate Irish aart for many y centuries.

The Looughnashadde trumpet iss thus strong g evidence of Celtic in

nfluence in Ireland.
I Butt does it marrk what is still
s
referred to as “the coming of the Celts”? No. La Tènne objects ofo this period are rare aand heavily associated with
w a
warriorr aristocracyy. There is simply
s no evidence
e of a large-scalle invasion of Ireland bby new peopples.

What ab bout the Irissh languagee, which is part

p of the Celtic
C
linguisttic family? There
T is no reason to suuppose that it
arrived in Ireland with
w invaderrs during th he Iron Age.. It is
probablly much old der. Barry CCunliffe sugg gests that coontacts
between n what he caalls the commmunities of the “Atlanntic
zone” were
w intensified in the pperiod 1300 0-800 BC. “It
would not
n be surprrising to findd the develo opment of broadly
b
similar languages evolving
e ouut of the com
mmon Indo--
Europeaan” with wh hich they alll started.

What th he Loughnashade trumppet tells us, therefore, is i that,

as theree had been for
f thousandds of years, there were strong
contactss with the continent and
nd that, as th
hey had donne for
thousannds of years, some of thhe Irish elitees were kittiing
themsellves out in the
t latest Euuropean stylle.
KE
ESHCA
ARRIIGAN
N BOW
WL, EARL
E LY 1st CEN
NTURY
Y
KESH HCARRIGA AN BOWL, EARLY FIRST F CENNTURY: There
T was noo Celtic invvasion of Ireeland. This does
d
not meean, howeveer, that the island was unaffected
u bby the upheaavals in Celltic Europe ccaused by another
a grouup of
invaderrs: the spreaad of the Rooman Empirre into Gaul
ul and Britain.

In the decades
d afteer 60 BC, Rome
R pushedd its frontieers northwarrds through Gaul (rougghly today’ss France) to the
Rhine and
a westwaards to the Atlantic.
A In 43
4 BC, the emperor Cllaudius set in i train the ffull-scale in
nvasion thatt
graduaally created tthe Roman province off Britannia. The conquest of Britaiin was slow w and violen nt, and the shock
waves were certainnly felt in Irreland.

Found in a tributarry of the Shhannon in CoC Leitrim, tthis small bronze bowl was given a fine polished finish by b
being spun
s on a laathe. But its glory is thee superbly ccast handle in
i the shapee of a bird’ss head with a long, curvving
neck, an
a upturned beak and big, b staring eyese that weere once inllaid with glaass or enam
mel. It is prob
bably a styllised
version
n of a duck.

Birds in general haave a stronggly supernattural aspectt in early Iriish culture, as messenggers from the otherworlld or
mediattors betweenn gods and humans.
h Th
he bowl wass thus probaably used in n drinking boouts that haad a ritual ass well
as a social function: we knoww that a drin
nking cerem mony was paart of the inaauguration oof a king.

The Keeshcarrigan bowl is sim milar to thosse found in D Devon and Cornwall and in Brittaany. It may have
h been made
m in
Ireland
d (a smithy w with similarr objects has been founnd near Balllinasloe, Co o Galway) bbut using Brritish prototyypes.
There is
i little doubbt that it reppresents som
me movemeent of people into Irelan nd. Some off the Gallic Belgic tribees
crossed
d into Britaiin as refugeees from thee Romans, ddisplacing native
n peoplee. These moovements off populationn
reachedd Ireland inn the centuryy before and d after the bbirth of Chriist.

Southwwestern Enggland had coonnections with w Irelandd going back k thousandss of years: CCornish tin was
w used too make
Irish brronze. It is nnot surprisinng that, in times
t of streess, these traading contaacts would bbe deepenedd into actuall
movem ment of peopple.

A bowl similar to this one, foound at Foree, Co Westmmeath, is asssociated witth what seem ms to be a Gallo-Britis
G sh-type
burial and
a also, rem markably, with
w a Roman boat. Thhe techniquee of finishing the Keshccarrigan bow wl with a laathe is
also neew to Irelandd, though itt would become centrall to later Irish art, inclu
uding the Arrdagh and Derrynaflan
D
chalicees.

Perhapps a little latter than the Keshcarrigaan bowl, theere is a cem

metery on Laambay Islannd, Co Dubllin, that conntains
the rem
mains of peoople from noorth Britain n, almost cerrtainly well-to-do memmbers of the Brigantes, a tribe whoose
revolt against
a the R Romans waas crushed in n 74 AD. RRoman expan nsion was the central ffact of Europ
pean life at this
time. Irreland couldd not escapee its conseq
quences.
Corrleck Head
d , first or seecond
d century
Until the late 19th ceentury, Corlleck
Hill, in thhe Co Cavan n townland of
Drumeagu gue, was the site of a
Lughnasaa festival heeld on the firrst
Sunday oof August. Lughnasa
L waas one
of the greeat quarterly y feasts of thhe old
Irish yearr. It also conntained milllennia-
old memoories of the Celtic god Lugh.
The Lughhnasa festival, which laasted
well into the 20th cen ntury in Ireland,
carried onn over threee days, echooing the
idea of a ttripartite deeity.

Around 1 855 this po otently enigmmatic

stone heaad was found d near Corleeck
Hill. Carvved into a 32cm-high piece
p of
rounded ssandstone arre three sim milar
faces, all with the samme narrow
mouths, bbossed eyes and remotee,
implacablle expressio on. A small hole in
the base oof the head suggests thaat it
was securred to somee kind of peddestal.
One of thhe mouths allso has a sm mall
circular hhole, a featu
ure that linkss it to
several caarved headss from Yorkkshire.

This link to Roman Britain

B remiinds us
that Irelannd is, at thiss time, on thhe cusp
of the Rom man world.. But if the Corleck
C
Head reprresents a neew variant inn
religiou
us practice, it also speaaks to us of an astonishhing continu
uity.

The heead is often ttaken to reppresent an “all-knowingg god”, who o can see all dimensionns of reality. But its thrree
faces also
a link us bback to mucch older traditions of thhe three-nattured goddeess. The “poower of threee” is an impportant
theme of Celtic arrt, and is reppresented inn the commoon symbol of o the triskeel, or triskeliion: three in
nterlocked spirals.
s
It relatees to the tripple nature of
o the great goddess, thhe Morrígan
n: sovereigntty, fertility aand death. But
B it is alsoo
commo on in Romanno-British art, a through the figures of the Matrronae, the th hree ancestrral mothers, representinng
strengtth, power annd fertility. The Corleck Head, whhich is neith her obviously male nor female, and d which cann be
seen too unite old Irrish and new w Romano--British cultts, touches all
a of these nerves.
n

In the context
c of thhe Lughnassa festival, the
t head maay representt the old god d Crum Dubbh, who was buried forr three
days with
w only hiss head above ground, so o that the yooung Lugh could temporarily takee his place. Máire
M MacN Neill,
in her classic
c ‘Thee Festival off Lughnasa’’, suggests tthat “there was
w a custom m of bringinng a stone head
h from a
nearbyy sanctuary aand placingg it on the to
op of the hilll for the durration of thee festival. T
The head loo
oking in diffferent
directio
ons may be . . . lookingg propitioussly on the rippening corn n-plots.”

That so
omething off this ritual survived weell into 20thh-century Irreland (and into Brian FFriel’s play ‘Dancing at
a
Lughnaasa’) is spinne-tingling but
b not entirrely illogicaal. The Corlleck Head may
m represeent a late exp pression of pre-
Christian religion.. But it also points forw
wards to a reeligion that was beginn
ning to spreaad from thee Mediterrannean –
the onee with three persons in one God.
Pettrie Crrown,, secon
nd cen
ntury
y
Thee Vikings didn’t
d wear horned
h
helmlmets. The Iron
I Age Iriish did.
Theere are two outstandingg
exaamples, the “Cork hornns” (at
Corrk Public Museum)
M andd the
Pettrie Crown, so called beecause
it ccame from thhe collectioon of
thee 19th-centu
ury antiquariian
Geoorge Petrie..

Petrtrie either didd not know or did

nott record wheere it was oriiginally
fouund. But it iss a remarkabble
obj ect, and it hints
h at the
eme
mergence of a kind of perrson
who
ho would hav ve a long preesence
in IIrish life: thee cattle baronn.

Thee “crown” consists

c of a sheet
of bbronze with h a pair of highly
deccorated disccs attached tot its
fronnt. Each dissc supportedd a
connical horn, only
o one of which
surv
rvives. The discs and hoorn are
magagnificently decorated with
w
currved trumpeet shapes, soome
termminating in stylised birrds’
heaads. This coomplex bronnze
arraangement was
w then sew wn on
to a leaather or texttile band to form a head
d-dress. Thee very high quality of the
t decoratiion and riveeting suggessts that
this waas worn by a particularlly powerfull figure.

This poower may haave derived to a large ex xtent from liinks to Rom
man Britain. Bull
B cults, ass we have seeen, were long
establisshed in Irelaand, but the horned
h headd-dresses aree a new phen
nomenon, uttilising new casting tech hnologies annd
showinng off the higgh-end desiggn of the Eu uropean Ironn Age culturee known as La
L Tène. It iis hardly acccidental thatt these
innovattions are linkked to the iddea of a lead
der who assoociates himself visually with the weealth generatted by cattle.

The Ro oman general Agricola remarked that t Ireland could be taaken with “o one legion aand a moderrate numberr of
auxiliaaries”. It is ppossible thatt some kindd of invasionn was attem
mpted. The Roman
R poett Juvenal records that “we
“
have taaken our arm ms beyond the
t shores of o Ireland”. If so, the in
nvasion was either beatten back or the
t Romanss
decided d that Irelannd wasn’t worth
w the efffort of conqquest.

They did,
d however, trade withh Ireland. The T historiann Tacitus no otes of the island in thee first centurry that “the
interiorr parts are liittle knownn, but throug
gh commerccial intercou urse and the merchants,, there is beetter knowleedge of
the harrbours and aapproaches””. The Irish imported gooods from the t Roman world,
w as wwe have seen n from the
Egyptian necklacee in the Broiighter hoard d. There aree Roman objbjects from the
t royal sitte of Tara an nd even thee skull
of a Baarbary ape ffrom Navann Fort, in Co o Armagh. B But the tradee went bothh ways. Rom man Britain,, with its citties and
standinng army, offfered a thrivving markettplace.

“The developmentt of urban ceentres,” sayss Eamonn K Kelly of the National Museum of Irreland, “meaans there’s demand
d
for catttle on the hooof. The Romman army consumed
c laarge amountts of leather. They weree importing hide, and thhey
were prrobably impporting butteer as well.” The often hhuge amountts of butter buried
b as vootive offerin
ngs in Irish bogs
b
point to
o a thriving cattle econoomy. Those who can exxploit these trade conneections comee from the rich r grazing lands,
and theey will go onn to form thhe core of Ireeland’s meddieval dynassties. “Every
ything in earrly Ireland is
i cows.”
Balllinderrry brrooch
h, circaa 600 AD
Found d in the 19300s in a crann nóg (lake
dwelling) on the ssouth side ofo Ballinderrry
Lough h in Co Offaaly, this is one
o of the mostm
startlin
ngly compleex objects ever
e found in
Irelandd. It arose fr
from a richlyy sophisticaated and
cosmo opolitan cultture in whicch pre-Chrisstian
forms are being suubtly reshap ped to elaboorate
Christian theologyy. It tells uss that Irish art
a was
both ab bsorbing innfluences froom far afield and
radiatiing them ouutwards from m Ireland.

The brrooch is zooomorphic (aanimal-shapped) and

penann nular, meanning that theere is a gap in the
ring, a style develloped in Ro oman Britainn but
populaar in Irelandd between th he fifth and
seventth centuries.. This is thee most elaboorate
ever fo
ound.

The maker
m of the brooch is an
a Irish artisst of
a made a large
internaational standding, who also
hanginng bowl fouund in one ofo the most famous
f
archaeeological disscoveries in
n western Euurope,
the Annglo-Saxon ship burial from Suttonn Hoo
in East Anglia.

The keey to undersstanding thee complex immagery

of the brooch is, hhowever, fo
ound elsewhhere, on
what is known as the “marigold stone”, from
Carndonough, Coo Donegal. The T two objjects
are lin
nked by haviing the sam
me pattern off a
geomettrical stem rrising towarrds a marigo
old flower. The stone makes
m the meaning
m of tthese symbools more exxplicit.

Firstly the coiled sshape of thee brooch reppresents a tw wo-headed snake – whiich is not, hhere, a symb bol of Satann. It
hints, rather
r at thee resurrectioon of Christ,, the analoggy being witth the snakee’s ability too shed its sk
kin and be
“rebornn”.

More remarkably,
r however, the
t patterns on the broooch come frrom Jerusaleem, and speecifically fro om the littlee jars of
holy oiil that were sold to weaalthy pilgrim ms at the Chhurch of thee Holy Sepu ulchre, the reeputed burial place of Jesus.
J
Inscribbed on thesee jars were the
t images thatt lie behiind the patteerns on the Ballinderry
B y brooch. Th hey show Chhrist’s
tomb under
u the doome of the church.
c Rising from thee tomb is the Tree of Liife on whichh Jesus asceends into Heaven.
H
In Irish
h art, the facce of Christ at the top of
o the tree iss representeed by a mariigold flowerr. This is th
he image of the
resurreection that iss shown in abstract
a and
d condensedd form on th he brooch.

“Theree is a remarkkably sophissticated iconography att work heree,” says Con nor Newmann, “and it’s the same message
m
which ultimately
u ccan be sourcced to the icconologists at work in Jerusalem in the sixth ccentury. So o you have a
broochh that is pagaan in its original form but
b that carr rries this com
mplex symb bolism of thhe resurrecteed Christ.” Very
V
early in
n the historyy of Irish Chhristianity, there is a brrilliant mixtture of continuity with older tradittions and upp-to-
date co
osmopolitann thinking.

“You have
h somebody,” says Newman,
N “living arounnd AD 600 in the Midllands who iss very wealthy, whose brooch
is prob
bably made bby the samee person wh ho made thee biggest han nging bowl found at Suutton Hoo [in Suffolk,
Englannd] and its icconographyy speaks, no ot just his reeligious perssuasion, butt to deep inttellectual traaditions thaat are
most cuurrent in Paalestine at thhis time.”
Cun
norix Stonee, Wro
oxeterr, Eng
gland,, 460--475
It is a brroken gravestone, with a crude insscription:
CVNOR RIX MACV VSMA VICO OIE. The slab, found inn 1967,
had prob bably been re-used
r from
m someone else’s buriaal. Yet
it is a resonant objeect, evidencee of the wayy Irish invadders
and raid ders took advvantage of tthe collapsee of Roman
Britain.

The slabb was foundd in Wroxeteer, near Shrrewsbury inn the

western English cou unty of Shroopshire. Th
his village was
w
once Virroconium, the
t fourth-laargest city in
i Roman Britain,
B
a thrivin
ng hub of 5,000 people – about thee same size as
Pompeiii. After the Roman legiions were withdrawn
w frrom
Britain, in 410, even places as far inland as
a Viroconiuum
became vulnerable to attack froom Irish raiiders.

The signnificance off this gravesstone is thatt the inscripttion is

in a parttly Latinised
d version off the Irish laanguage. It means
m
“Hound-king, son of o the tribe oof Holly”. Cunorix
C wass Irish,
and he was
w declarin ng himself a king in thiis part of Enngland.

From the fourth cen ntury AD, thhe Romans were buildiing
forts on the west co
oast of Britaain (at Holyhead and Cardiff)
nd against th
to defen he Irish raidders they callled ‘Scotti’’. (The
name suurvives as Sccotland.) WWe know fro om the Rom man
writer Ammianus
A th
hat they hadd diplomaticc relations with
w the
Scotti but
b that in 3360 AD the breaking off a treaty ledd to devastaating raids from
f both Irreland and Scotland.
S Thhe
ability to mount mmajor seaborrne raids sug
ggests a ressurgence of wealth in Irreland, connnected to thhe expansionn of
agricullture and thee building of
o huge nummbers of stonne ring forts.

As Romman power collapsed entirely,

e Irish raiders weere followeed to Britain
n by Irish seettlers. The most
m importtant
colony
y was Dyfedd, in southw
west Wales, but
b Argyll, in western Scotland, th he Isle of M
Man and partts of southw
west
Englan
nd were alsoo colonised.

This ex
xpansionaryy drive had huge
h conseqquences in IIreland. Thee Romans had
h done deeals with, annd helped too keep
in place, the old kiingships in Ireland. Bu
ut the new m
money that both b drove and
a resultedd from attaccks on Britaain
allowed the formaation of num merous smalll tribal unitts, or túathaa.

“Theree were,” sayys Conor Neewman of th he National University of Ireland, Galway, “nnew kids on the block inn these
centuriies. Before tthe fourth or
o fifth centu
uries you’vee got five grreat royal siites. It’s nott coincidenttal that Rom
man
materiaal has turned up at all of
o those sitees. Afterwarrds, the coun
ntry is fragmmented intoo 150 smalleer túatha.
Someth hing pretty rradical has happened. I think it’s tthe impact of
o the collap pse of the R Roman Emp pire on Irelannd.
Britain
n becomes aan open cashh register foor Irish raideers. Things are being roobbed – andd so are peo ople. The staatus
quo is undermined
u d.”

For thee existing British popullation, much h of this waas deeply un npleasant. But
B the colonnisations did result in muchm
closer ties
t betweenn the two isslands and a stronger B British influeence on Irish
h culture. Irronically, on
ne of the lonng-
term reesults of thiss was the sppread from Britain
B to Irreland of whhat had become the offficial Roman religion.
St Patrick
P k's Coonfessiion, ciirca 46
60-490
“Eg
go Patricius,, peccator ru usticissimuss et
miniimus omniuum fidelium m et contempptibilis
sum apud plurim mos . . . ” – “My name is
Patriick. I am a ssinner, a sim
mple countrry
person, and the least of all believers. I am
look
ked down uppon by man ny . . . ”

Thesse artfully hhumble words mark thrree

immmense momeents in the developmen
d nt of
Irish
h culture. Fiirstly, alongg with Patricck’s
Letteer to Corotiicus, it is thee oldest survviving
piece of writingg done in Ireeland, and so s
signals one imm mense chang ge: the arrivval of
literaacy. Seconddly, Patrick is the first person
p
in Ireland who ccan, through h these textts, be
posittively identtified as an individual
i w a
with
know wn life storyy. This, in other
o words, is the
mom ment when pprehistory endse and Irissh
histo
ory begins.

Thirrdly, of courrse, Patrick’’s Confessioon

speaaks to us of oone of the most
m paradooxical
but profound
p deevelopments in that Irissh
histoory. On the one hand, it is a dramaatic
narraative of the collapse off the Romann
Emp pire. As he rrelates, Patrrick, son of a noble
Rom mano-Britishh family, haas been kidnnapped
at th
he age of 16 and enslav ved as a herddsman
by Irrish raiders who no lon nger fear thee might
of Rome.
R On thhe other, just as Romann power
is vaanishing, Paatrick bringss it to Irelannd in
anotherr form: Chrristianity.

Patrick
k was not thhe first Chrisstian missioonary to Irelland. Pallad
dius, probably from Aux uxerre, in France, was sent
s in
431 as the first bisshop to “thee Irish believ
ving in Chri
rist” – a pre--existing Iriish Christiann communitty, possiblyy
centred
d around Caashel. Somee of these eaarly Irish Chhristians maay have been n, like Patriick himself, slaves capttured in
Britain
n.

But Patrick, as he says in the Confession n, preached tthe Gospel “unto thosee parts beyoond which th here lives
nobodyy”. Traditionn places thee hub of his mission in Armagh – not n implaussible given iits proximitty to the greeat
royal centre
c in Ulsster, Emain Macha, or Navan
N Fortt. Patrick claaims that “in Ireland, w
where they never
n had anny
knowleedge of Godd but, alwayys, until now w, cherishedd idols and unclean
u thin
ngs, they arre lately beccome a peopple of
the Lorrd, and are ccalled childdren of God;; the sons off the Irish and
a the daug ghters of thee chieftains are to be seeen as
monks and virginss of Christ.””

verstates thee speed of thhe movemeent from thee old religion to the new
This ov w, but it refl
flects the reaality that Paatrick
played a key role iin the spreaad of Irish Christianity.
C

This is the earliestt surviving manuscript

m copy, madee around 80 07 by the scrribe Ferdom mnach in Arrmagh. (Its
openinng words apppear on foliio 22r of thee Book of A Armagh, which is displaayed with thhe Book of Kells at Triinity.)
It leavees out thosee parts of thee Confessio on in which Patrick men ntions his own failuress and weakn nesses: for thhe later
monks who were iinvolved in establishing his cult, itt was imporrtant to show w him as a ppowerful worker
w of woonders.
Most probably,
p whhile he was alive, it waas his humillity and simp plicity that made Patricck so attracttive and
persuassive. W
Where to see e it Old Libra
ary, Trinity C ollege Dublin
n, 01-89623220, tcd.ie/libbrary/bookoff kells
Mu
ullamaast Stoone, 500
5 - 6600 AD
D
When a castle at th he Hill of MMullamast wasw being
demolished, this limestone booulder was found f beingg re-
used ass a lintel. Th
he spiral carrvings, whicch are closee to
those foound on meetal dress-piins and broo oches of thee
period, date it to th
he sixth cenntury AD, affter the misssion of
St Patriick. What iss intriguing,, however, is i that its
symbollism remind ds us that inn Ireland thee arrival of
Christiaanity did noot mark a suudden break k with the paast.
Insteadd, the stone speaks
s of a remarkablee continuity in one
of the most
m resonaant of so-callled Celtic rituals:
r the sword
s
in the stone.
s

The ideea of the tru

ue king beinng the one who
w can pulll a
sword from
f a stonee is central to the Britissh legends of
o King
Arthur.. Conor New wman has nnoted that many
m sacred stones
which functioned
f a “icons off tribal and cultural identity”
as
have straight, narroow groovess on their su urfaces. Theese have
generallly been dismmissed as reesults of vaandalism or
ploughiing. But Neewman has ppointed out that they occcur far
too ofteen and are far
f too regullar for this tot be the casse.

The Mu ullamast Sto one is one ssuch stone. It

I functioneed,
almost certainly, asa the place where the Uí U Dúnlaingge
kings of
o Leinster were
w initiateed. In itself,, it is notablle that
such ann important ritual objecct has no Ch hristian
symbollism. “Theree is little dooubt that this is the inauugural
stone of
o the Uí Dú únlainge,” saays Newmaan, “and therre’s
nothingg in the ornaamentation that you could describee as
Christiaan”. This do oes not neceessarily meaan that those who
first useed the stonee were clingging to the old
o religion.. But it
does shhow that in Ireland,
I Chrristianity was often anoother
layer onn top of oldder traditionns that surviv
ved and thriived. In
particullar, rituals of
o kingship retained theeir broad shhape for
anotherr thousand yyears. The idea
i of the “sword
“ in thhe stone” seeems to have lasted at lleast from th he fifth or sixth
centuriies to the 122th.

The Mu ullamast Stone has fouur blade marrks on the leeft hand sid v deep onnes on the top. The new
de and two very w king
seems have
h struckk or sharpenned his stonee against thee stone as a key part off the inauguuration rituaal. The persiistence
of these older rituaals may be rooted
r in th
he paradox tthat rising loocal chieftains, with neew money gained
g from
m the
exploittation of thee collapse off Roman Brritain, needeed to disguiise the noveelty of their power.

“Thesee young kidss on the bloock,” says Conor

C Newm man of the National
N Unniversity of IIreland, Galway, “still have
to legittimate their power. If you’re
y an arrriviste, the ffirst thing you
y do is bu uy a house aand fill it wiith antiques.
There’s a very keeen awarenesss of the rituuals surrounnding that moment
m of taking your place in hisstory.” Thesse
rituals may have bbeen self-coonsciously archaic,
a usedd by upstartts to claim the authorityy of antiquity.
St Patric
P ck's Bell,
B c.500 A
AD
AT TH HE beginnin ng of the 19tth century, thet last mem mber of
the Ó Maellchalla
M in family, a priest abouut to die witthout
ormer pupill, the Belfasst merchant Adam
heir, seent for his fo
McLeaan. He told McLean
M to ddig at a certtain spot in his
gardenn, where he found
f this bbell enclosed in the
magnifficently ornate shrine thhat was mad de for it in
Armag gh around 11 100. The Ó Maellchallain family had h
been “k keepers of the
t bell” sinnce medievaal times.

Unlikee so many off the objectss in this series, the belll owes
its pow
wer not to itss finesse or opulence but to its sim mplicity.
Small (less
( than seeven inchess high) and plain,
p it is made
m of
two pieeces of thickk sheet ironn, dipped in bronze, cloosely
rivetedd together, with
w a little llooped hand dle at the toop. It is
this sim
mplicity thatt makes creedible the id dea that it may
m in
fact have belonged d to St Patriick, or at leaast have surrvived
from his time. If one
o were to retrospectiv vely create a relic
of a fig
gure who qu uickly camee to be seen as superhum man, it
would surely be raather grandeer than this.

The Annnals of Ulsster , for 5533, record the opening of

o the
tomb of
o St Patrickk 60 years affter his deatth and the
recoverry from it of
o his goblett, his Gospeel and the “BBell of
the Tesstament”. An
A angel alleegedly direccted St Coluumcille
to send
d the cup to Down and the bell to Armagh,
A whhile
keeping the Gospeel himself.

The beell was certaainly an objeect of great veneration in the

Middlee Ages, and was wovenn into the legends of Paatrick’s
miracu ulous deeds. (He was saaid to have rung
r it at thhe
conclusion of his apocalyptic
a c battle again
nst the forces of
evil, diisguised as birds,
b on Crroagh Patricck.) Aside from
f its
religiouus and legenndary poweer, though, the
t bell had great
politicaal significannce. Along with
w the Bo ook of Armagagh and the “staff of Jessus” (destrooyed in Dub blin in the 166th
centuryy), the bell wwas crucial to Armagh’s claim to bbe the centrre of Patrick
k’s legacy, aand thus thee superior seeat of
Irish Christianity.
C

The chhurch was a new sourcee of power and a prestigee in Ireland and claims to primacy in church affairs a were never
going to
t be unconntested. As Patrick
P begaan to be acccepted as thee sole fatherr of Irish Chhristianity, it
i was impoortant to
be ablee to prove a direct connnection to hiis authority . Armagh, Downpatric
D k and Saul aall claimed to be the siite of
his burrial. Other ccentres dispuuted Armag gh’s primacyy – the earlyy partisan of
o Armagh’ss claims, Tirrechán, com mplains
of thosse who “hatee Patrick’s territorial
t ju
urisdiction” and attack Armagh’s claims.
c Thuus, however touching itt may
be as a plain expreession of sim mple piety, the bell waas also a mig
ghty weapon n in a strugggle for powwer. From thhe
earliestt days, the sspiritual message of thee new religiion could no
ot be entirelly disentanggled from olld-fashionedd
politicaal struggles for pre-emiinence.
Set of wrriting tableets, latte sixtth cen
ntury
AM MAN CUTT TING turf inn
Spri
ringmount bogb in
Balllyhutherlan nd, Co Antriim,
founnd this set of
o six yew tablets,
heldd together by
b leather sttraps.
Thee inner tableets are holloowed
out on both sid des, formingg the
pagges of a smaall wooden book.
b
Theese inner surrfaces are filled
fi
withh wax, on which
w someoone
wroote, or rather literally
insccribed with a pointed sttylus, a
bibllical text.

Thiss is the earlliest extant Irish

I
mannuscript. So omeone, a monk
m or
a sccholar at a monastic
m schhool
has written, on nto the wax, parts
of PPsalms 30 and 31 from the
Oldd Testamentt in a beautifully
preccise hand.

What is fascinatinng is that thee style of wrriting (know

wn as “Irish
h majuscule””) is alreadyy a distinctiv
vely Irish foorm,
hich surviveed into moddern times.
one wh

In a maanner typicaal of Irish cuulture, it combines elemments of ex

xisting scripts in a new way. Literaacy may be a
culturaal import froom the post--Roman wo orld but from
m very early
y on it is beiing rooted iin the local.

There are
a later stoories of wonnderful manu uscripts beiing written by
b 6th centu ury scribes and saints, with Saint
Colum
mba in particcular regularrly describeed as “writinng in his hut”. Early liv
ves of saintss also tell, for
fo example,, of a
boy being sent to oone of them
m “so that hee might learrn the sciencce of letterss”.

Not alll of this earlly writing was

w religiouss. Linguisticc evidence suggests thaat the task oof writing down the
volumiinous texts oof Brehon law began around
a this ttime too. Bu
ut none of th
hese manusscripts surviives.

Literaccy is not thee same as leaarning. Reaading and wwriting belon nged to the new
n order oof the Christtian monastteries.
But theere was alsoo an old ordder. The filid
dh (poets, saavants and keepers
k of tribal
t lore) eenjoyed eno
ormous presstige
and con ntinued to aassert their professiona
p l privileges . This is wh
hat makes eaarly Irish litterature so rich:
r the crooss-
fertilisaation of the new Christtian literacy
y with the olld oral tradiitions of my
ythology andd satire, lyriic poetry annd
eulogiees for local kings.

As Celltic scholar P
Prionsias Mac
M Cana pu ut it, “By th e end of thee sixth centu
ury, the chuurch (that is to say the
monastteries) and tthe filidh haad come to terms
t and fr
from that timme on there is evidencee of an ever--increasing
practical co-operaation and asssimilation between
b them
m.”

The ressult of this ffusion is Western

W Euro
ope’s first noon-Classicaal vernacular literature. Monks wro ote in Irish as
a well
as in Latin, and thhey wrote doown old pree-Christian sstories as well as religious texts. B
But they didn’t just recoord the
existing
g Irish-langguage formss, they changed them.

The meetres of Latiin hymns annd the habitt of rhymingg crept into Irish poetryy. The demaands of writting made for
f new,
more direct
d styles of expressiion, more eaasily undersstood by lay
y people thaan the often baroque an
nd self-conscciously
elitist learning
l of tthe filidh. But
B literacy didn’t oblitterate what had
h gone beefore: to an extent that is practically
unique to Ireland, it gave it a new and much
m longer life.
Chu
urch d
door handl
h le, circca 700
0-720
Found on a riverrbank in Doonore, Co Meath,
M in 19884, this
is alm
most certainly the handldle for a dooor to a churcch. Its
opuleence and sopphisticationn tell us howw far Irish
monaasteries had already com me from thee ascetic,
unwo orldly impullses behind their origin nal foundatioon. It
openss a door into
o a period oof obvious prosperity,
p in
whichh the churchh is fully inttegrated in the
t structurres of
poweer.

The handle
h is a spectacular
s and suprem
mely confideent
expreession of tecchnological mastery. Itt is made upp of
three pieces: a beeautifully enngraved cirrcular plate of
tinnedd bronze, a splendid lioon’s head thhat was probbably
formeed in a clay cast, and a frame that was probabbly
madee from a wax x model. Thhe lion’s eyes are inlaidd with
brown glass that is made to look like am mber.

As well
w as its tecchnological sophisticattion, the hanndle’s
artistrry is eviden
nce of a connfident cosmmopolitanism m. The
lion’ss head obvio ously comees from Rom man traditionns
(similar images were
w used inn Roman teemples) andd from
bibliccal iconograaphy (the lioon is often a symbol foor the
evang gelist St Maark). More sspecifically,, this lion iss
similarr to one feattured in the Lindisfarnee Gospels, tthe superb illluminated manuscript
m from North humbria.

Irish, Pictish,
P Rom
mano-Britishh and Anglo o produce a vigorous stew of visual
o-Saxon inffluences are mingling to
styles. But the idea of the lionn as doorkeeeper is also a more bro
oadly European image, found, for example,
e inn the
palacess of the Frannkish emperor Charlem magne.

t is a far cry from thhe origins off monasticissm in the deeserts of norrth Africa aand Asia Miinor as a waay of
All of this
fleeing
g the entanglements of the t ordinary y world. Thhis ascetic sttrain certain
nly survivedd in Ireland, most notabbly in
the starrk remoteneess of the monastic
m setttlement on SSkellig Micchael, off thee Kerry coaast. But therre is nothingg stark
or remo ote about thhis door hanndle: it speaks of a worlrldly and cosmopolitan church withh connectio ons both to local
l
politicss and to inteernational currents.

It is sig
gnificant, inndeed, that Irish
I monks seeking to attain the original
o monnastic ideal of removal felt it necesssary to
go to Skellig
S or evven, by the end
e of the eighth
e centuury, to Icelan
nd. The neeed to go to ssuch literal extremes
e suuggests
an awaareness that the mainstrream monassteries weree increasinglly integral to t the econoomic and po olitical life of
o the
country y. They enjooyed the paatronage of, and were inntertwined with,
w the po
owerful locaal dynasties that were
assertinng their conntrol over ann expandingg and increaasingly prod ductive society. This wa
was a period of great
clearan nces of foressts, of the expansion off arable landd and of thee building of perhaps ass many as 50,000
5 ring forts as
enclosu ures for welll-off farmers. The church was a kkey part of th his expansivve Ireland.

This was
w a churchh that felt coonfident eno
ough to engaage in long and bitter disputes
d with
th Rome abo out the corrrect
date fo
or the most iimportant Christian
C fesstival, Easteer. It was developing neew ideas aboout pilgrimage and pennance
that had a profounnd influencee on Christiaanity as a w
whole. And it i was not em
mbarrassedd to display its
i wealth and
a
sophisttication on a church dooor.
Thee Book of Kells,
K circa 800
It has
h been callled the Irishh equivalen nt of the Sisttine
Chapel, and th he analogy iis not ridicu
ulous. The Book
B of
Kells is not merely
m the grreatest workk of Irish viisual
art.. It belongs among the great creatiions of westtern art.

Onne of the bigg differencess, though, iss that the Boook of

Kells is also fuunny and pllayful and combines itss grand
reliigious vision with a hommely humanity. Everyw where
theere are touch
hes of comeedy: a letter extended too form
a monk’s
m tonsu
ure, a wordd broken in two
t by the paw p of
a caat.

Thiis is not to say

s that the task of mak king the boook was
anyything but serious. It reequired the skin
s of 185 calves
to make
m the veellum pagess. The rangee of pigmentts used
for the colourss – orpimentnt, vermilion
n, verdigris, woad
andd, perhaps, folium,
f whiich produces beautiful shades
of mauve
m and purple – is far greater than
t that off other
conntemporary books. Theere may hav ve been one
guiiding visionnary leadingg the team of monks, ass it is
clear that on many
m pages the script annd the imagges
werre done by thet same haand.

Theere have been argumennts over the years aboutt where

thee book was made,
m with suggestionss ranging from
Spaain to (moree plausibly)) the great monastery
m att
Lindisffarne, in Noorthumbria. One place iti was almoost certainly
y not createdd is Kells itsself. Instead
d, the consennsus is
that thee book was made on thhe island of Iona, off th e west coasst of Scotlan
nd, whose hheavily Irish h monastery was
foundeed by Saint C Columcille in 561. It may
m well havve been inteended to honour his meemory: from m early on itt was
known n as “the greeat book of Columcille”
C ”.

Iona was
w raided byy Vikings inn 802 and 806, and its m monks retreeated to a neew base in K
Kells. The probability
p is that
they brrought at leaast the bulk of the book
k with them
m: it is not im
mplausible that
t some suubsequent work
w may have
been doone in this nnew monasttery in Co Meath.
M

Whatev ver its preciise history, the book caan be secureely placed within
w Irish culture. Thee contorted animals, hiighly
stylisedd humans annd fabuloussly ornate in nitial letterinng are still rooted
r in the La Tène ttradition of “Celtic” artt that
had beeen rooted inn Ireland forr 1,000 yearrs. Many off the animall and bird im mages are inndeed comp parable to thhose of
the greeat Irish mettalworkers.

But, in a way that iis also typicaally Irish, th

he book is feed by many cultural
c streaams, from PPictish sculptture in Scotlland to
Visigotthic and Carrolingian dessign in Spain n and Francee, and even to the Coptiic art of the nnorth Africaan church.

Even th
he biblical ttext itself is eclectic, co
ombining paassages from m different Latin transllations. Indeeed, it seem
ms that
the mo
onks paid moore attention to the sum mptuous vissual art than
n to the sacreed text: therre are numeerous spellinng
mistakes, and a whhole page iss repeated. This
T suggessts that the book
b was neever intendeed for practtical use in
reading
gs at Mass bbut was, rathher, understtood from thhe start preccisely as an extraordinaary object.

The boook’s richneess lies in what

w Roger Stalley,
S the art historian
n, has called
d “the consttant humourr and vitalitty of
the orn
nament, the freshness ofo the pigmeents, the unw
wavering beeauty of the script and tthe hauntingg ambiguityy of the
religiou
us imagery””.

Its genius is that itt is sacred but

b never solemn. The vvividness, vibrancy
v and
d constant, jjoyful inven
ntion make it seem
almost a living thiing.
Tarra Broooch, eighth
h centtury
In th
he late 19th century, coppies of the Tara
T Broochh were
a muust-have item m of Celtic chic. One im mportant
natio
onalist organ nisation, Ingghinidhe naa hÉireann,
adoppted it as its membershiip badge. Th he brooch became
b
a sym
mbol of the Irish culturral revival because
b it
preseented a stunnning answeer to Victoriian theoriess of
Irish
h racial backkwardness.

In th
his case, at leeast, the sym
mbol is not let down byy the
realitty: an objecct that speakks of a cultu
ure functionning at
the highest
h level of sophistiication.

It is not,
n in fact, associated with Tara: it was founnd in
1850 0 by a child playing on the seashorre at Bettysttown,
Co Meath,
M and sold
s for a feew pence by y a “poor woman”
to a watchmaker
w r in Drogheeda.

Now itt seems not so much a museum

m pieece as a whoole museum
m in itself, a bravura dissplay of muultiple masteery.
Though h it is less thhan 9cm in diameter, 76
7 patterns hhave been id
dentified onn its surfacee. Both faces, and even the
inner and
a outer eddges of the ring,
r are cov
vered with a teeming prrofusion of designs, eaach minutely y executed with
w
dazzlin
ng skill. Eveen the cord that was used to securee the brooch
h in positionn culminatees in an elabborate designn that
incorpoorates a serppent and booth animal and human hheads.

The broooch isn’t thhe expressioon of a partticular technnique; it is a virtuoso performancee of virtually y every techhnique
known n to eighth-ccentury metaalworkers. Gossamer-t
G thin spirals ofo copper arre set againnst gold and silver. The
techniq
que of so-caalled chip caarving, borrrowed from Germanic jewellery,
j iss applied too create elon
ngated birdss.
Beaded d and twisteed gold wirees are solderred to a basse of sheet gold.
g Studs of
o glass, ena
namel and am mber punctuuate the
pattern
ns. A tiny annimal sits inn a panel jusst 2cm widee, its front paw
p raised anda its bodyy winding baack on itselff.

What does
d hat this wass made for a member of an elite thhat saw itsellf as the equual of
all of thhis virtuositty mean? Th
any othher in post-RRoman Euroope. The brrooch was uused to fasteen a cloak, which
w was w worn over a tunic, a forrm of
power--dressing thhat ultimatelly derives frrom images of Roman emperors an nd that wass still, at thiss time, usedd by
high-raanking officcials in Byzaantium.

In Irelaand, broochhes were useed in this waay by high-sstatus women, as well by men, andd by clericss and seculaar rulers
alike. In
I high crossses of this period,
p even
n Jesus and the Virgin Mary
M are wearing
w Taraa-type broocches.

But thee brooch alsso resonatess with pre-C

Christian Irissh beliefs. In
I one tale from
f aroundd the time th
he Tara Broooch
was maade, a Munsster king whho sleeps with the godddess of soveereignty is told to clothhe her in a purple
p cloakk and
“the qu
ueen’s broocch”.

What we
w see here,, then, is a native
n Irish elite at the hheight of itss self-confid
dence, easilly integratin
ng Christiann and
pre-Ch
hristian tradiitions, and its
i local powwer, with a sense of beiing Europeaan. It is arguuably the laast time thatt such
ease would be posssible.
Ard
dagh C
Chaliice, eig
ghth ccenturry
It was found in 18 868, under a stone slab b in Reerastaa, near
Ardagh, Co Limerick, with a second, mu uch plainer bronze
chalicee and four silver
s broochhes. Along with the
somew what later Derrynaflan C Chalice, thiis is one of the
t
finest liturgical veessels of thee early Chriistian worldd.

Its beaauty lies in the

t contrastt between th he plain sheeen of
the polished silver and the finnesse and complexity of o the
ornammentation: go old filigree of stylised beasts,
b studds of red
enameel and blue glass,
g and bbeautifully engraved
e letttering
that sp
pells out the names of thhe Apostless.

Like so much elsee from this eextraordinary period, thhe

chalicee suggests a culture thaat is at once internationnal and
insularr. “The mod del,” says RRaghnall Ó Floinn
F of thhe
Nation
nal Museum m of Ireland, “is late Rom
man tablew ware, from th he early cen nturies AD. It has paralllels not in western
w
Europee but with BByzantine veessels now in
i St Mark’ s in Venicee – not becau use there is direct Eastern influencce but
because they both draw on a common
c Ro
oman ancesstor.” But th he squat shaape of the tw wo-handled bowl is
indigen
nously Irishh. And the fiiligree work
k, with its tyypical abstraaction, is veery different
nt from the more
m realisttic
Roman n style of reppresentationn.

This Irish love of complexityy is everywh c be read either

here on the cchalice. On the central medallion, the image can
as a cru
ucifix or as a marigold.

Numbeers play a laarge part in the design: the 12 Apoostles are echoed in the 12 studs annd 12 panelss of the bannd at the
top. What
W is extraoordinary, thhough, is thee sheer nummber of pieces that mak ke up the chaalice: more than 350.

The skill and compmplexity laviished on objjects such aas the Ardag gh chalice highlight som
mething thaat is conspiccuous
only by
y its absence. From thiss golden age of Irish C Christianity, there are veery few survviving churrches. The simple
stone oratories
o thaat do survivee from this period, suchh as that at Gallarus in Co Kerry, aare not at alll typical off the
generall run of conntemporary Irish church hes. Stone eendures, wo ood perishess – and mostt churches ini Ireland were
w
wooden n.

A poemm in the exuuberant monnkish collecction Hisperrica Faminaa describes a “wooden ooratory . . . fashioned out
o of
candle--shaped beaams” and talks of how monks
m wouuld “hew thee sacred oak ks with axess, in order to
o fashion sqquare
chapelss”. The usuaal word for a church in
n early mediieval Irish is dairthech – literally, ““oak house”.

Typicaally, these buuildings weere small, reectangular aand relativelly plain. So,, even whilee the Irish were
w makingg
religiou
us objects oof astonishinng opulencee, they weree using themm in relativeely humble sspaces.

This teendency to uuse wood raather than sttone was disstinctive: in

n most of Eu
urope, stonee churches were
w regarded as
essential marks off prestige.

Why not in Irelandd? The expllanation is certainly

c noot to be founnd in a lack of skill in m
masonry – thhe stoneworrk at
Gallaru
us is exceptionally accoomplished. One possibbility, hinted d at in the mention
m of thhe “sacred oak”,
o is thatt
Ireland
d retained a pre-Christiaan attachmeent to the hooliness of trrees.

But thee obvious reeason is thatt Ireland still had no urrban traditio
on. When thhe idea of crreating town ns finally arrrived
in Irelaand, it would come fromm the outsid de and at thee expense ofo the culturre that lavishhed its ingeenuity on obbjects
such ass the Ardaghh Chalice.
Derrrynaaflan Paten,
P , late eeighth
h centtury
This is the most spectaacular item from the hooard of
eucharistic vessels fouund in a shallow hole att an
ancient chuurch site in D Derrynaflan n, in Co Tippperary,
in 1980. Allthough the chalice and d strainer foound
with it are fine
f objectss, the paten is of an altoogether
higher ordeer. It is an ellite object and
a it tells usu a
great deal about
a the Iriish elite of its
i time.

The paten isi a large sillver dish, 37

7cm wide,
probably inntended to hhold the sacred host durring
Mass. (It iss unlikely too have been used regulaarly,
and may haave been inttended pureely as a votivve
offering.)

As with thee Ardagh Chhalice, the sheen

s of thee silver
sets off an extravagantt, polychrom
matic displaay of
ornament, set
s in 12 secctions aroun
nd the
circumferen nce and on the rim.

Gold filigreee, finely knnitted wiress of silver annd

interwovenn threads off copper form m dizzying
patterns on
n panels studdded with im mitation
gemstones made of caast glass and d held in coppper
frames.

Exquisitely
y traced goldden men sitt back to bacck in a
tiny panel. Snakes, staags and eaglles twist andd rear
in minute spaces.
s

As with h so much eelse from thhis zenith off early Irish art, the paten is a locall response tto a Europeaan model – in this
case, laate Roman ssilver platteers that weree decorated with animaals around th he rim. Thiss desire for a connectioon to
the old
d Roman woorld is essenntially aristo ocratic. Andd the paten isi also elitist in a theoloogical sensee. The imagges
containn symbolic rreferences tot redemptio on, the Euchharist, Bapttism and beaasts from thhe Book of Genesis
G andd the
psalmss, but these ssymbols woould be appaarent only tto the educaated few.

Which raises the qquestion: for whom waas this elite oobject madee? In this caase, we actuually know thatt Derrynaaflan
was paatronised byy Feidlimid Mac
M Crimth hainn. “Thee betting,” saays Raghnaall Ó Floinnn of the Natiional Museuum of
Irelandd, “is that hee was the man
m who actu ually had thhe paten com
mmissioned d.” And Feiddlimid, morre than anyoone else
at this time,
t embodies the inteertwining of religious aand secular power. He was both kiing of Munster and bisshop of
Cashel. He claimeed the high kingship
k off Ireland bettween 820 and
a 847, wh hile retainingg his church
h offices, which
w
came to o include thhe abbotshipps of both Cork
C and Cloonfert. Thiss combinatioon was not uunusual in contempora
c ary
Europee, but in Feiidlimid’s caase its contraadictions weere especiallly stark.

Feidlim
mid appears in the annaals in differeent guises. HHis forces attacked
a and
d burned thee monasteries of Fore and
a
Gailinn
ne in 822 annd 830, resppectively, an nd attacked Kildare in 836 – all, prresumably, to further his
h claim to the
high kiingship. Yett he is also recorded
r ass an ascetic anchorite, as
a a scribe, and
a even, pposthumouslly, as a sainnt. He
was a terror
t but, itt seems, a holy
h terror.

Feidlim
mid’s aggresssion was evvidence thaat a long peaace between n the major regional facctions that dominated
d I
Irish
politicss – the Uí N
Néill overlorrds of Tara, the Éoganaachta (Feidllimid’s dynaasty in Munnster) and th
he Connachtta in
the wesst – was com ming to an end
e even beefore externnal shocks began
b to hav
ve a profounnd effect. His
H role in
commiissioning thee Derrynafllan paten is a reminder that these heavenly
h ob
bjects were nnot free from
m earthly
connecctions.
Mo
oylouggh Bellt Shrrine, eeighth centu
ury

Objects such as thhe Ardagh Chalice

C or th
he Derrynafflan Paten arre obviouslyy very speccial. They beelonged to a social
and eccclesiastical elite. They were used rarely,
r if at all. But what was ordin
nary religioon like? How
w did most people
p
interact with the w
world of the saints? Thiis unique shhrine gives us
u some sennse of popullar faith and
d ritual.

Discovvered by turfcutters in a bog in Co Sligo, the sshrine is maade up of four hinged ccopper-alloy y plates, eacch
enclosiing a fragment of a sim
mple leather belt. The b elt clearly belonged
b to a popular eearly saint. The
T bog at
Moylou ugh, where it was founnd, is not farr from the ssite of an early monasteery at Carroowntemple, so there maay well
be a co
onnection too this holy place.
p

The shrine is itselff in the form

m of a belt: the two fronnt plates forrm a false “buckle” whhose frames are decoratted
with biird and animmal heads annd end in ellaborate glaass pieces. The
T overall impression
i is somewhaat dulled noow:
originaally, the beltt would havve been a rio
ot of colourr, with shinyy silver paneels, blue andd white glasss studs, andd red
and yelllow enameel borders.

What’ss particularlly interestinng about the shrine, thouugh, is that it was not kept
k in somme monastic treasury, aw
way
from th
he ordinary believers. TheT patternss of wear onn its surfacees show thatt it was mucch used. An
nd what wass it used
for? Miracles
M and blessings.

There is
i something very intim mate in the way
w this rellic was deplloyed. The hinges
h and tthe wear an
nd tear show
w that it
was actually placeed around thhe bodies off devotees.

Monkss themselvess regarded the t belts of their holy ppredecessorss as a form of spiritual protection. One Irish monkm
in Austtria wrote thhat “the girddle of Finnaan” protecteed him “agaainst diseasee, against annxiety, again
nst the charrms of
foolishh women”. P Presumably, the devoteee hoped to gain this saame protectiion, at least against thee first of these
evils.

Saints’ belts even acquired a frankly mag gical aura. IIn a Scots Gaelic
G legen
nd, the hero MacUalraig
g uses the “magic
“
belt of Saint Fillann” to capturre a water ny
ymph.

The Moylough Beelt Shrine was

w probably
y placed aroound the bod
dies of supp
plicants whoo came with
h all sorts off
illnessees, wounds and deform
mities.

But theere is a partiicularly stroong early-m

mediaeval traadition in western
w Euro
ope of the bbelts or girdlles of saintss being
placed around the waist of a womanw und
dergoing a ddifficult chilldbirth. There are later records of the
t purporteed
girdles of Sts Joseeph, Margarret of Antiocch, Brigid aand many otthers being used in thiss way.

The elaaborate natuure of the Moylough

M Belt Shrine m
makes it highly unlikely
y that it wass actually ussed for wom
men in
labour,, but it mostt probably was
w placed on
o pregnantt women as a blessing tot ensure saafe childbirtth.

It reminds us that, for all the sophisticati

s on of early Irish Christtianity, for most
m peoplee religion sttill functionned as it
alwayss had, as a w
way of trying to controll an unprediictable and often frightening worldd.
Cru
ucifixiion pllaque,, eighth cen
ntury
At fiirst glance, this
t plaque,, made from m a thin sheeet of
copp per alloy andd originallyy attached too some kindd of
wood den or metaal backing, ccould be fro om anywherre in
earlyy medieval Europe.
E It iss Christ on the cross. An
A
angeel hovers on n each side oof his head. On the left side is
the Roman
R soldier who offefered Jesus a sponge soaked in
winee. On the rigght is the sooldier who stabbed his side
s
with a lance. Th his iconograaphy had been used in Europe
E
for about
a 200 yeears before this piece was
w made inn
Irelaand.

But the
t plaque, found in Stt John’s chu urchyard on the
shorees of Lough h Ree, in Riinnagan, Co o Roscommoon, and
origiinally a mucch shinier, m more gilded d object thann it is
now, is intriguin ng in two w ways. First, what
w looks to t us
like a standard image
i is acttually very rare
r in the Ireland
I
of thhis time. Thee most strikking aspect of o Irish art of
o this
periood is that it displays rellatively little interest inn
show wing the hum man form oor using imaages to tell stories.
s
It is not that Irissh artists couuldn’t deal with humann
figurres – they did so on higgh crosses. TheyT simplyy chose
not to
t do it veryy often.

They y, and presuumably theirr patrons, were

w more
interrested in thee fantasticall filigrees an
nd mind-bennding
patteerns at whicch they exceelled to a deegree unsurppassed
in Euurope. The Rinnagan
R C
Crucifixion is i thus, sayss
Ragh hnall Ó Floiinn of the N National Mu useum of Ireeland,
“the only narrative scene off such an eaarly date thaat we
have. There
T are fraagments of other objeccts that mayy have been similar, butt they’re verry much in the minorityy.”

Apart from
f its rariity, the otheer startling thing
t about this Crucifiixion is how
w utterly Irissh it is. Thee basic imagge may
be stan
ndard acrosss Christendoom, but the way it’s treeated is strik kingly distin
nctive. If yoou look at itt at all closeely, you
can seee it not just as an objectt of Christiaan worship bbut as an elloquent stateement of thhe way the Irrish made thheir
own syynthesis of C Christianityy and an older culture.

Christ is not show wn here as a semi-nakedd Mediterrannean man but b is fully dressed
d in thhe Irish fash
hion. His maask-
like facce is full-froontal, with an
a implacab
ble stare thaat is oddly faamiliar from
m an earlier object in th his series. Christ
C is
not deaad here: his eyes are oppen, and thee image is mmeant to be triumphant.
t Rather, thee expression nless featurees hark
right baack to the ppre-Christiann Corleck Head,
H from pperhaps 600 0 years earliier (see Weeekend Reviiew, June 255th).

Even more
m fascinaating, thouggh, is the patttern on Chrrist’s chest. It looks no
othing like thhe standard
d image of thhe
Crucifiixion. Ratheer, it is madde to look lik ke a breastpplate, with thhree back-too-back C-shhaped scrollls. There are
similarr patterns off triple spiraals above the head of C Christ and on n the wings of the angeels – a triplee triad. Thiss is
typical Irish imageery, again going
g right back
b to the ppre-Christiaan Iron Agee. Even Jesuus, it seems, is more thaan a
little biit Irish.