Ros O Maolduin

Physical artefacts appear static and immutable. Nevertheless, throughout their production, exchange and consumption they accumulate meanings that can change or become lost.  Close examination and consideration can sometimes reveal aspects of those meanings and lead to rich artefact life histories or 'biographies (Appadurai 1986). In this paper  Ros Ó Maoldúin and Ed Danaher consider the life story of a Neolithic shale axe, found on a recent development project in Ireland, from source to deposition.

Considerable quantities of Nordic/Baltic amber occur in Irish later Bronze Age deposits. This exotic material reached Ireland through exchange networks that may have stretched all the way to the coasts of Denmark. This paper reviews some of that evidence and then looks to the texts of medieval Ireland in a search for analogies of how such travel might have been socially facilitated.

The Knockloon and Roughan hill projects aim to increase our understanding of social organisation and change in the west of Ireland during the Beaker period in Ireland (Chalcolithic: c.2500 – 2200 BCE). This paper presents results from four seasons of fieldwork on two neighbouring hills: Knockloon and Roughan and builds earlier work on Roughan which began in the 90s. It includes details from the excavation of four megalithic tombs (a court tomb and three wedge tombs) on Roughan (2000 & 2015 – 2017) and a barrow on Knockloon (2018). It also includes data gathered through remote sensing (magnetometry and electrical resistivity) and UAV survey. While remains of several periods were encountered, this paper focuses only on the Beaker period burials. We consider why people were contemporaneously buried in such different monuments, barrows and wedge tombs, within the same region and ask whether these reflect different belief systems of cultural backgrounds. This is approached through analysis of the cultural material associated with the burials, and osteological, aDNA and isotope analyses; post-excavation work which is only partially complete. We will also return to excavate more of the barrow in 2019. However, we feel our initial findings substantially add to our understanding of social organisation in the west of Ireland during the Chalcolithic and present these in this paper. The project has a relevance to the wider understanding of the Beaker phenomenon in north western Europe, the period of the first metal use in that region, and to the question of whether it was the movement of people or ideas that were the prime drivers of social change during the period.
The project was helped through grants from The Irish Quaternary Society, The Royal Irish Academy and the fees of students attending the fieldschool. The aDNA work is being carried out Dan Bradley and Lara Cassidy at The Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin and the isotopes work by Rick Schulting at Oxford University.

The Burren, in the west of Ireland, is a karstic limestone landscape with an unusually dense collection of Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic tombs, upon which there is a good history of research. The availability and quality of samples and our knowledge of the remains make it an excellent arena to test the extent to which regionalised questions can be addressed through ancient DNA analysis.
Here, Neolithic and Bronze Age populations from diverse burial contexts are sequenced to a median of 1X genomic coverage, allowing for the accurate imputation of diploid genotypes. This combination of dense sample sets and diploid calls is a key requirement in the identification of finescale population structure among seemingly homogenous groups. Indeed, economical approaches to
the creation of such data, both molecular and bioinformatic, are imperative for addressing more localised archaeological questions.
We demonstrate such potential here, using haplotypic analysis based on imputed genotypes to identify potential autosomal structure (or lack thereof) among closely related Irish prehistoric populations. Patterns of haplotypic chunk sharing are used to identify outlying individuals within populations, while signals and likely geographical sources of recent introgression events from divergent
groups are explored based on chunk length distributions. These methods are particularly powerful when combined with patterns observed in uniparental markers. Maximum likelihood methods for the estimation of genetic relatedness among low coverage samples
are utilized to demonstrate the varied kinship dynamics associated with different megalithic tomb types, which may reflect the potentially diverse and ever-changing social functions of such constructions. Finally, the creation of a dense sample set which spans the window of migratory influx that occurred into Ireland during the Neolithic to Early Bronze Age transition allows us to explore how larger continental-scale upheavals may have manifested, both culturally and genomically, at a local level.

Beaker pottery and other elements of the ‘Beaker package’ are present in Ireland from the mid-third millennium BC. However, classic
beaker burials, typified by crouched inhumations accompanied by burial goods, do not occur. Nonetheless, we still tend to define
‘beaker burials’ by the presence of beaker pottery or other grave goods.
Excavations of mid-third millennium BC settlements and associated wedge tombs in the Burren, Co. Clare, in the southwest of Ireland,
found beaker pottery in the settlements but not with the burials. An earlier Neolithic court tomb, located in the centre of the
later settlements and wedge tombs, also received burials during the mid-third millennium without any accompanying pottery. Elsewhere,
within the same region, burials were placed in other Neolithic tombs, a portal tomb and Linkardstown type cist, accompanied
by only a sherd of beaker pottery. Clearly there was a complex range of burial options. Choice may have been influenced by real or
imagined relationships with past burials, age, gender, status or several other factors.
This paper will report on the results of three recent wedge-tomb excavations, review the varied burial practices within the Burren and
Ireland during the mid-third millennium, and consider what the range of burial choices might reflect.

Over the past three years, students, staff and volunteers with 'The Irish Fieldschool of Prehistoric Archaeology' have excavated three Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age wedge tombs on Roughan Hill in the Burren. This is part of a wider project, initiated in the 90's by Dr Carleton Jones, which has included the excavation of an earlier Neolithic court tomb, several settlements and palaeoenvironmental sampling. The human remains and finds from these excavations are helping construct a picture of social organisation, religious practices and human/environmental interaction during Irish prehistory. The preservation of the bone in the karstic Burren environment is particularly beneficial, in allowing for osteological, isotopic and aDNA analyses. However, the lack of stratigraphy at these sites makes dating their construction and often complex histories of subsequent use difficult. To understand this chronology, it is essential to get multiple dates. Recent radiocarbon dates, some of which were obtained with the support of IQUA, are helping to fill out that understanding. This paper will outline and discuss the results we have received to date and evaluate the challenges we still face.

Burial places of giants and hags, beds of mythological lovers, places frequented by the fairies, or remains of bygone races, prehistoric megalithic tombs were significant landscape markers in rural post-medieval Ireland, that, by their sheer size and physical presence, demanded attention and attempts at explanation. For many, they were dangerous places to be avoided, yet for some, they were intriguing and offered inspiration, or an identity rooted in a glorious past. For others, they offered shelter and even, presumably only for the most destitute, they became home.
By drawing on folklore, contemporary accounts and the results of recent excavations, this paper will consider the avoidance, use, preservation, destruction and perceptions of megalithic tombs on Roughan Hill, and in the wider Burren of Co. Clare, during the post-medieval period.

During the summer of 2015, we conducted the first of what we plan to be several excavations of megalithic wedge tombs on Roughan Hill, in the Burren, Co. Clare. The monument we encountered during excavation was a far more complex structure than could initially be seen. It was apparently built in three stages; however, it is, at this stage, difficult to say whether these were carried out in close succession or in different phases. What we can say, is that its builders had very carefully selected and shaped several of the chamber elements and orientated the richly textured and eroded surfaces in particular directions. Furthermore, we know where the slabs were sourced; in a quarry on Roughan Hill some distance from many of the tombs. Prepared slabs, propped up and awaiting removal, still sit in the quarry; presumably abandoned because of some flaw, or because the era of wedge tomb building had come to an end before a need for them arose. The slabs were left sitting in the locations from which they had been pried up, with one side balanced on small rounded sub-aerially eroded boulders. In this way, we have the beginning and the end of the chaîne opératoire of our monument’s construction on Roughan Hill, and the contents of the tomb, changes to its structure, signs of activity surrounding it and its partial destruction, all combine to give, what at first might have been considered a relatively unimpressive ‘small’ monument, a rich and potentially storied biography.

Since wedge tombs were identified as a distinct class of monument the question of their origin has been central to opposing narratives of the Irish Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Some authors have argued that their origin lies in Brittany, whereas others have argued for a solely indigenous development. It is a debate that is intertwined with those on the origins of the Beaker phenomenon and metallurgy, and one that has arguably been overly influenced by shifting theoretical paradigms, but on which the standard textbooks are still largely equivocal. From the dating evidence available, their construction appears to have begun during the mid-third millennium BC, several hundred years after the construction of other megalithic tombs, and at a time when novel artefact forms, ceramic types and technologies arrived in Ireland, and exchange networks were radically reorganised. This paper will consider afresh the evidence for origin and stimulus behind wedge tombs, and asks how, and in what ways, the communities who built wedge tombs were connected with the wider mid-third millennium north-western Atlantic world.

Travel has long been regarded as an important aspect of European Bronze Age myth and religion (cf. Briard [1979] 1976; Kristiansen and Larsson 2005). It is perhaps represented most vibrantly in the figurative art of Scandinavia and North Germany, particularly on Late Bronze Age razors (Kaul 1998), but is also believed to be reflected more widely. The origins of this belief system and associated symbols are commonly seen as originating in the south, in Mediterranean civilisations or intermediate groups (Kristiansen and Larsson 2005), although northern influence has recently been suggested (Bradley and Nimura 2013). This paper considers the Early Bronze Age razors from Ireland and Britain (Jockenhövel 1980; Kavanagh 1991; Mount forthcoming) and traces the reoccurrence of a particular motif believed to be of relevance. It argues, in a similar vein to Kaul’s (1998) suggestions about later Bronze Age northern European razors, that the persons they were buried with may have been initiates concerned with real and\or mythic travel, but in either case of cosmological significance. It also suggests that, while interaction with southern groups may have also been important, a commonly held ‘symbolic reservoir’ (after David et al. 1991) existed among Northern and Western European metal using groups from an early stage, which different communities at different times chose to draw.

Bradley, R. & Nimura, C. 2013. The Earth, the Sky and the Water's Edge: Changing Beliefs in the Earlier Prehistory of Northern Europe. World Archaeology, 45(1), 12-26.
Briard, J. [1979] 1976. The Bronze Age in Barbarian Europe: From Megaliths to the Celts, London, Routledge & Keegan Paul.
David, N., Gavua, K. B., MacEachern, A. S. & Sterner, J. A. 1991. Ethnicity and Material Culture in North Cameroon. Canadian Journal of Archaeology, 15(171-177.
Jockenhövel, A. 1980. Die Raisermesser in Westeuropa, München, C.H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchandlung.
Kaul, F. 1998. Ships on Bronzes: A Study in Bronze Age Religion and Iconography, Copenhagen, Publications from the National Museum.
Kavanagh, R. M. 1991. A Reconsideration of Razors in the Irish Earlier Bronze Age. The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 121(77-104.
Kristiansen, K. & Larsson, T. B. 2005. The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Investigations undertaken in advance of the Kildare bypass led to the discovery of a small unenclosed Early Bronze Age settlement in French Furze townland, Co Kildare. The inhabitants chose to build their dwelling on a south facing slope situated a short distance above a small stream and cook lower down the slope closer to the nearest water supply. The only artefacts found on the site were struck lithic tools and debitage (waste material), and 8 sherds of Bronze Age pottery. While the remnants of pottery may appear quite paltry, the information they reveal about the people who lived at this site and the contribution it can make to our wider knowledge of life during the Early Bronze Age are extremely important. Prior to careful monitoring of large infrastructure projects, very few settlement sites with which we could connect much more complete pots which have been found with burials. From these few sherds we can tell that the inhabitants used pottery of the bowl tradition that indicates widespread social connections with other groups. This paper will consider the potential of the pottery remnants from this site, allied with those from burial sites, to tell us about the lives of potters and pottery users and about the social relations between them almost 4000 years ago.

The presence of beads in earlier Bronze Age burials is often interpreted as an indicator of wealth, or status, on the part of the deceased. In the cases where the materials were rare, or had demonstrably distant origins, the long distant networks implied would seem to support such suppositions. However, this may only represent part of the story; in some cases button and bead materials or forms may have had other symbolic meanings and their inclusion in burials may reveal a variety of relationships. This paper will look at the distribution of a number of bead and button materials and types in Ireland, particularly those in burials, and then focus in on several examples in an attempt to show how the narrative can be enriched with a more complex understanding of the relationships and beliefs that might be represented.

Considerable quantities of amber occur in Irish deposits of Later Bronze Age date, especially in hoards of the Dowris phase (Eogan 1983). This exotic material reached Ireland through exchange networks that may have stretched all the way to the coasts of Denmark, potentially via Scotland (Eogan 1999). This paper is concerned with the likely process of those exchanges and the level of mobility so inferred. It is argued that travel, at least over some of the stages along this network, may have involved long distance ‘directional movement’, as opposed to ‘down the line exchange’, and asks what social conditions might have facilitated such travel. In a search for analogy this paper looks to the texts of early and later medieval Ireland, “where much stress is placed on the duty of hospitality in the laws, wisdom-texts and sagas... [and] to refuse food and shelter where it is due is to be guilty of the offence of esaín literally ‘driving away’” (Kelly 1988, 140). A special class of ‘hospitaller’ the briugu existed in Ireland  from at least the early medieval period until the 16th century AD (Kelly 1988, 37). Early texts outline the obligations of this role as “having a never-dry cauldron, a dwelling on a public road and a welcome to every face” (Kelly 1988, 36). Could such as system of hospitality have facilitated long distance travel across Bronze Age Europe? What class, or rank, of person could have travelled along such networks and how would such journeys have been understood?

Eogan, G. (1983) The Hoards of the Irish Later Bronze Age, Dublin: University College Dublin.

Eogan, G. (1999) 'From Skåne to Scotstown: some notes on amber in Bronze Age Ireland' in Harding, A., ed. Experiment and Design: Archaeological Studies in Honour of John Coles, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 75-86.

Kelly, F. (1988) A Guide to Early Irish Law, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

""Considerable quantities of amber occur in Irish hoards of Later Bronze Age date, especially those of the Dowris Phase. This exotic material reached these shores through exchange networks that may have stretched all the way to the coasts of Denmark, potentially via Scotland (Eogan 1999). This paper is concerned with the likely process of those exchanges and seeks to understand how amber was ‘valued’ at different stages along those networks, particularly prior to and during its deposition in Ireland.

The term ‘value’ covers a number of inter-related concepts. These can be divided into: ‘values’ in the sociological sense, ‘value’ in the economic sense and value in the structural linguistic sense (Graeber 2001). This paper deals primarily with the first two meanings and argues these are largely inseparable, especially in the context of an ‘embedded economy’. It will employ insight from analogous ethnographies, particularly the famed ‘Kula ring’ of Melanesia (Malinowski 1922, Weiner 1992, chapter 5), to illustrate the differences between the economy in which we live and those which may have existed during the Irish Later Bronze Age. While no historical or ethnographic analogy is exact, and they do not supply parallels, they do offer a range of analogies superior to methodological approaches predicated on implicit ‘common sense’, particularly when considering concepts such as value. With this in mind this paper will assess two previous, very different approaches to the interpretation of Bronze Age hoards (Maher and Sheehan 2000, Bradley 1985, Bradley 1990) and then will extend an argument to consider the value of Irish Later Bronze Age finds of amber.

Bradley, R. (1985) Occasional Paper No. 13. Consumption, Change and the Archaeological Record: The archaeology of monuments and the archaeology of deliberate deposits, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Department of Archaeology.

Bradley, R. (1990) The Passage of Arms: An archaeological analysis of prehistoric hoards and votive deposits, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eogan, G. (1999) 'From Skåne to Scotstown: some notes on amber in Bronze Age Ireland' in Harding, A., ed. Experiment and Design: Archaeological Studies in Honour of John Coles, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 75-86.

Graeber, D. (2001) Toward an anthropological theory of value: The false coin of our own dreams, New York: Palgrave.

Maher, D. and Sheehan, J. (2000) 'Different ages, varying perspectives: the phenomenon of hoarding' in Desmond, A., Johnson, G., McCarthy, M., Sheehan, J. and Shee Twohig, E., eds., New Agendas in Irish Prehistory: Papers in commemoration of Liz Anderson, Bray: Wordwell, 177-188.

Malinowski, B. (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea, London: Routledge.

Weiner, A. B. (1992) Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While Giving, Berkley: University of California Press.
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"Coasts are an obvious and acknowledged liminal landscape, situated between the worlds of land and sea and serving as the point of departure and arrival for sea journeys. Promontories inhabit a special place within that liminal landscape, projecting from the land into the sea. This paper will look at how traditional interpretations of these sites as defensive locations often fall short, how their enclosure may have had a magico-religious or ritual purpose and what rites we might expect to have taken place in such spaces. While not always easily accessible from the sea, promontory enclosures are arguably located along ancient seaways, or near landing and departure points, and it is proposed that they therefore mark significant points in a ritually imbued cultural landscape. The belief in an antagonistic relationship between land and sea will be central to this interpretation. This is evidenced in taboo and the use of liminal agents by coastal communities to navigate between those worlds (Westerdahl 2005). With a focus on Irish promontory enclosures, this paper will explore these hypotheses by looking at several elements including: established sea routes, individual site morphologies, placenames and maritime taboos.
Westerdahl, C. (2005). Seal on Land, Elk at Sea: Notes on and Applications of the Ritual Landscape at the Seaboard. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. 34 (1) p.2-23"

During the months of June, July and August of 2015, our fieldschool staff and students excavated a wedge tomb on Roughan Hill. The tomb in question was CL017-180002, a very dilapidated wedge tomb missing its capstone and one of its side-stones. The excavation aimed to address questions and theories set out in a paper by this author, our academic director and Thor McVeigh (Jones et al. 2015).
Prior to the excavation, relatively little was visible. The site had only been discovered during an intensive survey in the 1990s (Jones et al. 1996, Site E). A surrounding mound and some possible kerb remnant were also noted during that survey.
Removal of the sod revealed a substantial circular stone cairn, approximately 7 m in diameter, surrounding the chamber (Fig. 1). Where surviving, the outer edge was neatly kerbed with large slabs up to 1 m in length. A second inner kerb-line, most obvious to the rear of the chamber and around 4 m in diameter, was concealed within the cairn (Fig. 2). In terms of sequence, the chamber must have been built first and then the cairn would seem to have been added in two stages; however, it is not clear how much time, if any, there was between these stages.
The chamber was approximately 2 m long and 1 m wide and orientated to the west-southwest. While one side-stone was missing, judging from the front blocking stone and the size of rear of the chamber, the tomb was wider to the front than the rear. The alignment of a possible pinning stone, for the missing side-stone and similar to the stone pinning the extant side-stone, would support this supposition. It would appear that, internally, the chamber was c. 0.9 m wide at the rear and c. 1.1 m wide at the front. The extant side-stone and the front blocking-stone were carefully knapped into shape and the side-stone rose noticeably toward the front of the chamber (Fig 3); at the rear it was c. 0.5 m high and at the front 0.75 m high.
The entire contents of the chamber, the area to the front of the chamber and a section through the cairn, to the northeast of the chamber, were excavated. A substantial amount of cremated and unburnt human bone was retrieved. The majority of the bone came from within the chamber, where it was retrieved from within a layer of soil underlying a layer of stone. There were few notable concentrations that could be interpreted as individual
ii
deposits; rather, the bone appeared mixed throughout the layer of soil. The bone is currently being analysed by Osteoarchaeologist Dr Linda Lynch and Zooarchaeologist Dr Fiona Beglane.
There were no obvious grave goods within the chamber; however, some partially articulated sheep/goat bones, retrieved from under the front of the sidestone, may represent the remains of an offering.
An unburnt, and at least partially articulated, adult was uncovered within the stones stacked up against the north-northwestern outside of the chamber. It sat largely within the voids among the stones; however, some elements that had fallen to the base of the cairn were suspended within soil.
Several lithics were retrieved from and around the cairn. These were mostly debitage and cannot be stratigraphically tied to the burial depositions within the tomb. The assemblage does include one particularly fine flint blade and several other stuck lithics that are not of a local geology. These are being analysed by lithics specialist Dr Killian Driscoll.
Once, the osteological and zooarchaeological analyses are complete a comprehensive program of radiocarbon dating, aDNA and isotope analyses are planned. Two petrous bones have already been forwarded for aDNA analyses and the initial results are promising. The aDNA work is being carried out by Lara Cassidy and Professor Dan Bradley at Trinity College Dublin, and the isotope analysis is being carried out by Dr Rick Schulting’s team at the School of Archaeology, Oxford University. It is intended to get all radiocarbon dates through Queen’s University Belfast.

The Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age (EBA) in Ireland were periods of great flux, out of which and into which, novel technologies and institutions emerged and were transmitted. This thesis combines analysis of the material culture from that period, with insight drawn from ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological research on exchange, to advance its aim of tracing and understanding that flux. It explicitly challenges assumptions of prehistory, that are either too reliant on experience of the modern western world, or are overly constrained by the academic paradigms in which they were conceived.
The thesis begins with a study of past anthropological, archaeological and ethnoarchaeological approaches to, and perspectives on, exchange (chapter 2). It then considers the constraints and opportunities, natural and cultural, which communities engaging in exchange in prehistoric Ireland faced (chapter 3). The body of the thesis, rather than attempting a complete overview of the period, focuses on those aspects which were found to be most profitable to the study of exchange. It employs concepts such as chaîne opératoire, object biographies, materiality and intercontextual archaeology to analyse diverse aspects of material culture, such as metalwork (chapter 4), ceramics (chapter 5), objects of bodily ornamentation (chapter 6), burial monuments (chapter 7) and burial goods (chapters 5 & 6). This is followed by two regional case studies (chapter 8) in which it is possible to take a more complete overview of the Chalcolithic and EBA remains and where the role of exchange in the diachronic trajectories taken by the communities in those respective areas is considered. Finally, extrapolating back out to the broader picture, the insight from the former chapters is combined to facilitate discussion of the major trends in, and the particular or universal aspects of, exchange in Chalcolithic and EBA Ireland (chapters 9 & 10).