Dr. Muiris O’Sullivan
Appearances
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Well, in some ways, we know them a lot through the tombs. In other ways, they are mysterious people. Possibly because what they placed in the tombs, they don't seem to have placed in their, to have had in their daily lives. So they are mysterious. If you take something like the Boyne Valley, in spite of, you know, a lot of work has been done and research,
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Feed working has taken place and, you know, flint working has been found, etc. But really, you would have thought that something as enormous as these great mounds and the work involved in them would have involved quite a large workforce of some kind. And indeed, people to oversee that, all of which seems to suggest, you know, some sort of intensive settlement of some kind.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
But there's really no evidence of this settlement. We don't see anything like a village or... You know, it's hard to know. So some people have explained this by saying that perhaps it was nomadic. In other words, that a lot of the people who worked at Newgrange or were buried at Newgrange, something, may have lived somewhere else.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
These may have been traditional places to which they brought the dead or something like that. It's very tricky. It's very difficult to know. Of course... We assumed there were farmers, or there was certainly a farming economy underlying this massive output, because farming had come to Ireland maybe 600 or 700 years earlier before the tombs in the eastern part of Ireland were built.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
The ones in County Sligo in the west, like Carrowmore and Carrowkeel, they were built a couple of centuries earlier, or they certainly started a few centuries earlier.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
But it was really in the context of this arrival of farming and the spread of farming through Ireland and the consolidation of farming within Ireland that the megalithic tombs emerged and particularly then the spectacular ones, the passage tombs. The interesting thing is that one of the ways that we know a little bit about them is through DNA research.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
One particular skull fragment from Newgrange has allowed geneticists to build a sort of a profile of the individual, a genetic profile of the individual. And it would appear that this person was related to some people from the Caramore tombs and also people who were found at Millen Bay and County Downe. It's a bit of mobility there.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Yeah, which suggests mobility and perhaps also a sort of a stratum in society that may have been operating or interlinking with each other rather than with society at large. Some people have suggested it was an ability or something like that, but it's difficult to know. But they are slightly elusive otherwise, you know.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
It's difficult, you know, in the case of other types of megalithic tombs in Ireland, they tend to occur where there is sort of farming settlement and amongst fields, in the case of KJ Fields in County Mayo. But the Boyne Valley ones, they're found very often, not just Boyne Valley, but Passage Homes generally. They're often found on locations like the tops of ridges or
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
close to the tops of hills or along river valleys or something like that, they seem to have had the ability to choose where they wanted to place these monuments, which again suggests power of some sort.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
I think you're right. They certainly are making a statement in the landscape. That's the first thing. And in my own imagination, this is a purely personal view, trying to come to terms with why these things happen, so to speak.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
One of the interesting things about the passage zooms is some of them occur high up on tops of hills, Baltinglass Hill in County Wicklow, for example, or Knocknery in County Sligo.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And where these tombs have been excavated, there is evidence of pre-tomb activity at the sites, which suggests that it's not the tomb made the place sacred, that the tomb is just a particular expression of the sacredness of the site. So the way I like to see it, for what it's worth, is that I imagine this world of farming spreading and more trees being cut down and countryside being opened up.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And these traditional sacred places, the nature of them and the sort of landscape context of them, if we had to put it that way, being changed by farming and sacred places almost coming under threat. And I often wonder, was the building of a megalithic tomb on these places almost a way of stabilizing the places and saying, this is a sacred place, you know?
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Now, that's just a personal sort of way of expressing it. And they may not even have thought that way. But you wonder if it was one of those impetuses that may have been going on. And this is why these monuments, they're often designed, especially passage tombs, to be seen from far away. And they interlink across the country from mountaintop to mountaintop in some cases.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
I'm just thinking of particular cases where in the evening, maybe when the sun is beginning to drop in the sky and you're in the landscape, maybe within 10 miles of these, the mound or the cairn on top of the mountain stands out so strongly, you know, it's very starkly. And these were obviously designed to be seen. And they obviously sent a statement.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Michael J. O'Kelly made an effort to try to quantify how long it would have taken, you know, and I think he had a, I think he was talking about maybe if you had a workforce of about 300, et cetera, that you would take maybe about six years to build a new Grange. I think that was something like that he gave as a figure, you know. But it's very difficult for us today.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
I've seen, I mean, anyone who has worked in the field, so to speak, and I'm from a farming background myself as well, in addition to the archaeology, that people who work with particular types of material become very adept at handling the material. I've even seen at Nouth, for example, where there was a lot of stone being moved around by the people working on the site by hand.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
They became extraordinary at moving large stones around, rolling them on boughs of trees and so forth. And I think that's one of the things to take into account. But then as against that, they didn't have the facilities we would have today. They didn't have wheeled vehicles, for example, never mind anything mechanical. They didn't have horses at the time in Ireland.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
So they were moving the stuff without a lot of the modern facilities. And some of these stones they moved were absolutely extraordinarily large stones, which in some cases were brought from quite far away.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And, you know, I always sort of think it's so funny like that, having brought these stones from wherever, you know, they arrived down there, maybe if they came along the boy, whatever way they came along, they said, well, while we're at it, let's bring them up to the top of the hill, you know. Yes, that's the thing.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Absolutely, yeah. And indeed, I often think, and I'm straying into something slightly different, so bear with me for a second, that the journey of each of these stones must have been in itself quite a saga, you know, and something that was remembered by people, you know, the actual...
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
they must have remembered particular stones and someone's toe got crushed or whatever, you know, in the exercise, you know, that each of these stones had a story by the time it got up to the site. And there is evidence that they were locating stones in specific places, you know, very deliberately looking for particular types of stone.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
In the case of the Boyne Valley, they would travel quite a distance to find the stone they wanted. And then they brought that to the site and they organized the stone in the architecture, presumably in a meaningful way. So particular types of stone tend to occur in particular places.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And this suggests that stone had meaning for them and possibly the places from which they extracted the stone had meaning as well. And in the way that you might bring material often carries this kind of significance, like people bringing water back from lured or something like that, you know, that it's a material often carries significance for people. Are they carry stones?
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
We discussed this actually at another time that in my own case, we're from County Kerry in the west, the southwest of Ireland, and living in County Wicklow, but it's very significant to bring a stone from West Kerry to County Wicklow. And it carries a sort of a significance because of where it's from, especially if it's from an ancestral place or something like that.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
People would do things like place that on the tombs of parents, grandparents, and so forth. And this often happens with immigrants as well. So this sort of thing that happens today, I presume the same would have gone on in the Stone Age, and stone carried a certain significance for them.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Clarehead is just north of Dundalk Bay. It's on the northern side there on the Cardiff Peninsula. Basically, many of the stones used at Newgrange, the evidence seems to suggest that these are some of the larger stones I'm speaking about. They appear to have come from Clarehead. which is quite a journey, about 30 miles or something like that, to have brought them to the Boyne Valley.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
I mentioned earlier that there were a very large number of stones used in the Boyne Valley between all of the tombs there. But it would appear that Newgrange got the pick of the stones because the largest kerbstones, for example— They're also some of the finest stones as stones are to be found along the kerb at Newgrange.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Yeah, this circle of... They're at the base of the cairn, so to speak. They're... Some people said they're holding the cairn in, but I suspect their function was more ceremonial, defining the circular, more or less circular area within which the tomb was built and all of the main activity was taking place.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
That brings you to another angle when you're speaking about, maybe I'm taking away actually, Tristan, so please pull me back. But when they were building these tombs, it began with the alignment of the tomb. And I think that's an important point to make.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Yeah, they had to know in advance the direction in which the passage was facing, because in the case of Newgrange, they were facing the passage towards the spot on the horizon where the sun would rise at midwinter.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
It's assumed that the river was used as a way of moving them, and maybe the sea as well. But this is a precarious business with very large stones. And the other thing that I remember... Some years ago, some colleagues, they conducted a survey of the riverbed along the River Boyne because the assumption was if so many large stones were moved, somewhere along the way, one had to be lost.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Must be some shipwrecks. Or two or whatever. So they were checking if anything like that could be seen. What they found were actually a very large number of circular stones, which turned out to be tires. Wow. This is odd. There seems to have been nothing lost along the way.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
So if, whether this is a sign that they were particularly good in terms of how they managed all this process, or maybe it suggests that it wasn't along the river at all. There might be some other way they came.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
We don't really know, but we know that they got the stone from A to B. It was quite a challenge because they either had to go around Dundalk Bay or go across Dundalk Bay or something like that. They had to find some way of getting the material in, you know, so it was a tricky process.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And these were enormous stones, and then they had to deal with the rivers along the way, whether they brought them along the rivers or across the rivers. But... It was massive, and this had to be done with, in the case of the Boyne Valley, I count hundreds and hundreds of large stones, each travelling individually.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Hammerstones, and presumably using fire and water maybe to break them as well. But then you have to use this sort of activity carefully because... You don't want to damage the actual stone you're using or leave that all cracked and so forth, you know. So they seem to have known what they were at.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
But then everything about these people tells me that they knew what they were at because the whole logistics, as you say, of bringing these large stones and extracting them and placing them in position and so forth, that was an enormous exercise.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
The strange thing about it is that I always think that if you take a pebble from the seaside, a small pebble that's maybe five millimeters across or at most maybe seven or eight millimeters across, and now without modern technology, you now have the job of actually boring a hole through the center of that pebble in order to make a bead.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Yeah, the most famous, I suspect, prehistoric site. It's obviously a World Heritage Site, part of a World Heritage Site, probably... maybe the best known of the three because of the solstice, which we can speak about. And Nouth would be the other great one, but Newgrange would be the one that certainly would have been the first to be well known. It was excavated in the 60s and 70s.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And I think that's an extraordinary sort of a piece of activity, so to speak, by someone back in the Stone Age. And they have done this repeatedly, so presumably they had techniques. I think if you place that then onto a larger scale with the megalithic tombs, they knew how to handle stone.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
But what's maybe spectacular and maybe remarkable about all of this is that going back to their—who they were and so forth— We have no evidence that these people lived in strong houses of any type, or stone houses even in the case of Ireland.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
They seem to have lived in relatively flimsy buildings as far as we can make out, and yet they went from that to building these enormous megalithic structures. There's a sort of a dichotomy, so to speak, in the actual daily life of these people as we know it or as we don't know it. And then these remarkable structures they've left behind.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
I think so, yeah. They certainly would have used, I think, these types of things because they couldn't otherwise have done it, I think. You know, certainly they were using ramps, I suspect. The other thing is that in other places, in Brittany and so forth, where they were dealing with large stones, I'm thinking of the tableau de Marchand there where there was a sort of alignment there beside it,
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
that you're able to see evidence of them dealing with the stone, so to speak. Whereas in the case of these passage rooms, they didn't leave traces behind of the types of ramps or whatever they were using to build these monuments. I've seen various attempts to explain how they might have done it. You know, as you say, scaffolding ramps.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
some people have suggested that the interior might have been filled with something like sand and then the thing built on top of it. But I always think that all of that is very well, but ultimately someone had to take away these things, this scaffolding or sand. And you needed to predict what would happen at that stage, I think. And I think that's the genius of these people.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
In the case of the corbeled roof at Newgrange, as you know, it's this high high, cobbled roof, ending with a flat stone across the top. The way this cobbling was done is that, first of all, the stones leaned slightly outwards and downwards, so there's a slight angle in them. And the weight of each of these stones was behind, so to speak.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
So when you're inside a new range, you see what looked like boulders, maybe, you know, less than a metre across and maybe 20, 30 metres or centimetres or something like that, deep or whatever.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
But in fact, this is misleading because what actually happens is we're seeing in the case of this cobbling, in each case, the front of a much larger stone and the bulk of the weight of that stone is behind it. and start sloping slightly downwards so that each layer of cobbling is put up in this way.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And then it's the weight of the cairn behind it that keeps this cobbling in place as it gradually moves inwards to oversell the space of the cairn, of the chamber. And then at the very top, this flat stone is put across, which I suppose emphasises the fact that this is not an arch, but a corbel system, which is a slightly different building technology.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
What is remarkable is that in the case of both Newgrange and Nouth, these corbel chambers have stayed intact for the past 5,000 years and more. It's absolutely fascinating that.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
The excavations there began around that time, but Nouth emerged in terms of archaeological information slightly behind Newgrange in terms of information.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
They used a sort of, I can't quite remember the materials they used, but it was some, you know, a mixture of various things to actually seal the spaces. And they also had little channels on tops of these corbels at the back so that the water ran off them. So they went to quite some trouble to waterproof them in those cases.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Absolutely. And the three recesses, again, not to bring me back to the people if you want to, Tristan, but just to highlight the fact that the three recesses are also organized in a particular way. Obviously, it creates a cruciform effect. But generally in these passage zones, the right hand recess is given priority.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
preeminence in terms of size, ornamentation, elaboration, and sometimes the contents of that side. It's an interesting dimension of passage shows this emphasis in Ireland on the right-hand side, the preeminence of the right-hand side, because it's a cross-culture phenomenon. It's found in many cultures.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
including modern Christian culture, you know, or in Europe, right is associated with the best things, you know, in many ways, at the right hand of God, you know, this type of thing. Right is righteous, yes. It's always a metaphor for something better.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And in many languages, including Irish and English, even the terminology for right and left, and in other languages, they're often associated with goodness and more positive and less positive things. This metaphorical use of right and left, of the two sides. So they seem to have used it as well for some purpose.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Of course, the problem is we don't quite know what it means, but everything about it suggests that the right-hand side was seen as the more positive side.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
It's a very distinctive type that's found in Ireland, made up almost universally of abstract motifs, geometric, schematic type of designs, circles, spirals, zigzags, lozenges, you know, cup marks, of course, are called, but these are universal, so to speak, cup marks. But yeah, it's that type of thing. Now, it's a...
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
It's part of a much wider European rock art tradition, you know, that particularly in the Iberian Peninsula, you get a type of stone or a type of decoration on stone out in the landscape, in the open air, that is very similar to actually some of the megalithic art in the passage rooms in Ireland. In fact...
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
I would suggest that some of the passage to art in Ireland is much closer to that open-air rock art in Iberia in some cases than it is to other passage to traditions in Europe. And, Maurice, is this so-called Atlantic rock art? Atlantic rock art, very much so, yeah. When you think of Atlantic rock art, you're thinking of
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
They are more or less circular mounds, usually constituted of stone and soil and so on, covering a megalithic tomb, which is entered along a passage from the exterior into a chamber in the interior. And this gives them the name passage tombs. And the ones in the Boyne Valley, including Newgrange and Nouth, these are enormous, you know, maybe 80 meters across.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
The type of rock art is found in Yorkshire and Northumberland and then in Galicia and Spain and so forth. It's quite common. Kilmartin Glen, yeah. Yeah, Kilmartin Glen, exactly. Now, that's a more restricted form of art than what's found in the passage tombs. The Paschum's designs are slightly different. They're actually more sophisticated, you know, in terms of aesthetics and so forth.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
You know, you think of the Newgrange Entrance Stone and also some of the megalithic art in Brittany and other places like Gavrinus, etc. You know, it's actually quite sophisticated type of artwork.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And they seem in some cases to almost move away from the geometric designs in the case of Nouth, particularly in the Boyne Valley, where they seem to kind of get carried away with making designs and running along the shoulders of stones and things like that. And they sort of lose touch with the geometric sort of origins of the artwork, which is very interesting.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Absolutely, yes. And of course, it's repeated then in the case of Newgrange inside in the end chamber as well on one of the stones there. There's a very famous example of it there as well. It's an extraordinary feature of the megalithic art in the Boyne Valley that the richest concentration is to be found at Noth.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And in fact, I always think of Noth as this place where they're developing the art and, you know, they're experimenting and pushing the boundaries. But probably the finest example of megalithic art in the Boyne Valley is that Newgrange entrance stone. And very much not far behind it is Curbstone 52 at the back of Newgrange. And then there is Curbstone 67 at Newgrange.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
These are the three big decorated curbstones. There are other decorated curbstones in Newgrange. But these three stand apart. And what's interesting about them is that if you were to take away those three from Newgrange, you would say that the megalithic art at Newgrange, especially on the curbs, is not in the same league as the megalithic art at Nouth, you know.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
But these ones lift Newgrange and actually... There's certainly a curbstone 1, the entrance stone, and the one directly across from it, curbstone 52. And remember that these are the ones that are on the axis of the rising sun. And, you know, if you drew a line through the site and through the passage.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And these are probably the two finest, most, the finest pieces of megalithic art in the Boyne Valley.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Well, I think to start, if Newgrange had been excavated in recent times and were then reconstituted, so to speak, or reinstated, we would not have that quite quartz wall. Because the system nowadays or the philosophy behind reinstating monuments after excavation is that you put it back the way you found it.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Some of them, you know, they're quite 90 meters in the case of Nouth. They're very, very extensive and they contained an enormous amount of material apart from anything else.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
You don't try to interpret how it might have looked originally on the basis that the whole life story of the site is important. But at the time, there were very good reasons for reconstituting it in this way at the time. This was back in the 60s and 70s. O'Kelly conducted engineering experiments with engineers on how the wall might have stood and fallen and so on.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And he related that to what he found on the ground. And he certainly found all of that quartz on the ground, more or less in front of the curb at Newgrange. And the way it was sort of wedged in a sort of a wedge shape, so to speak, thinning out as it went out, suggested it had fallen from above to him. Now, it's very controversial and people have queries and questions and so on.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
The interesting thing is that, as you mentioned there, that coarse wall has become so much part of Newgrange in the consciousness of people across the world at this stage. that probably it has to be left there, you know, that it was of its time. It was a way of restoring a monument at the time.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And in fairness, all of this quartz was found there, and indeed those rounded stones that are found amongst the quartz, they were all found on site, on the ground in front of the kerbstone. The one thing that might be of interest is that O'Keddie did point out that he did find stones on tops of the kerbstones.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
In an excavation I conducted myself at Knock Row in County Kilkenny, there was one particular kerbstone that had split, you know, and the front half of it had fallen forward, rather like a kebab, you know, sort of. And the filling of the space between the front half of that kerbstone and the back half of it was all clean white quartz.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
which suggested to me that the quartz also may have fallen from above somewhere. It couldn't jump up from the ground and jump into this space, so to speak. You know, something seems to have fallen from above. Now, that doesn't mean it was a vertical wall. I think that's the most controversial aspect of the new range reconstruction is that the wall is so high.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
It's not quite vertical, but it's very close to being vertical. The suggestion would be that if there were some quartz on top of the kerbstones, it may not have been as sheer as that, so to speak.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Exactly. And an aspect of the Boyne Valley that maybe was understated in the past, but has become clearer in more recent times, that these massive henge-like monuments that were built in the valley below Newgrange, they would have involved a similar amount of labour and input of resources there. but in timber as the actual megalithic tombs had.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
They were built perhaps somewhere, you know, maybe some hundreds of years after the megalithic tombs. But they do indicate, as you say, that this was a very sacred landscape with a lot of activity going on there. But then it runs out. Then it just dies after the beginning of the Bronze Age.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Exactly. Large stones. And these are enormous stones. In the case of Newgrange, which would have the largest stones, actually, in the Boyne Valley, some of the kerbstones there are approximately four metres long. maybe a meter high by sometimes almost a meter wide as well. So an enormous mass of stone. And they seem to have been collected round about the area.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
You know, when I say dies, that you have no more this massive input of activity and construction and so on in the Boyne Valley. And there seems to have been some sort of a lull through the Bronze Age in some ways, you know. But then in the early centuries A.D., for some reason, there's material from Roman Britain is placed in front of the tomb at Newgrange.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
in the form of coins, gold coins, for about the 3rd or 4th century. I think the 3rd and 4th century, maybe. There's a pair of bronze brooches from, I think, the 3rd century. There were some neck ornaments and other things, you know, of gold. And this material that seems to have come from provincial, you know, the edge of the Roman Empire, Britain, presumed to be Britain.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And they're placed at those standing stones in front of the entrance to Newgrange, it would appear. So this seems to indicate some sort of a significance for the site. And it's part of an upsurge of activity that took place at these megalithic tombs during the later Iron Age. This is about between three and three and a half thousand years after they were actually built in the first place.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
So for some reason, people are coming back. There were burials being placed at many of these sites. We have found, you know, fairly consistently, you find evidence of Iron Age activity at these sites. as if they were still important.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And mentioning the Roman material, there was also Roman material at the Hill of Tar around a passage there, which is known as the Mount of the Hostages, another very rich passage in terms of its contents and so on. And There as well, beside it, at the Wrath of the Synods, which is the site excavated by the British Israelites, but that's a slight distraction.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
There were found actually some glass, Roman glass, and other, and ceramics, you know, that were, have been identified as being largely drinking ware. And, you know, as if banqueting was taking place or something like that at these sites. So between burial, banqueting, the laying of, you know, sort of votive offerings or something like that, they seem to have attracted people in the Iron Age.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Now, what the motivation for that was is very difficult to know. Hmm.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Yeah, I think that's exactly the point, that the more we delve into these monuments, the more we realize how little we have known about them. and how much more there is to be had.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
I mean, the example of the DNA was a good example, but also we have found, for example, that in examining material very closely that's coming from these sites, that they seem to have treated human bone in very distinctive ways. You know, it wasn't just a matter of cremating the person and putting them into the tomb. There's evidence that, you know, there was mixing of bones going on.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
There's evidence that... The artifacts that are found with them were not simply artifacts they happened to be wearing, so therefore ended up sort of almost accidentally in the tombs. There's evidence that certainly in some of the cases that when they burnt, cremated the remains, some people have often suggested the bone and antler pins were cremated. keeping cloaks closed or whatever, you know.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
They don't seem to have been quarried. You know, there may have been outcrops that were quarried, but they weren't, you know, the entire stone is not a quarried stone. It may have been broken off an outcrop or something like that. They're massive stones, and this is what gives its name.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Experiments have shown that if these had been on the bodies when they were cremated, they would have disappeared. They would not have survived the burning. So it seems like they were placed into the ashes at a later stage because they are charred, but they're not burned away completely.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
There's also evidence, for example, that beads and pendants that were used at some of the tombs, they're made from stone that does not occur locally, but is brought from far away. So in the case of Tara, for example, some of the pendants there are made from serpentine. And serpentine is not found locally in the County Meath area, but comes from the west of Ireland.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And similarly at Knock Row in County Kilkenny, the beads there, when we examined them in detail, the majority of the beads are very large. Yeah, the majority were made from steatite, which is a type of stone that's not again found in Southeast Ireland, but actually comes again from the northwest, from Galway, Donegal, Mayo, that type of area. So there's a lot to be discovered.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
We've also found that the most common artifact may well be in these tombs, a bone tubular bead that has been really just mentioned in, you know, but hasn't really been examined, but has been examined more recently by Dr. Ruth Carden. And she has found that. This bead is generally made from bird bone.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
It's very elaborately carved at the terminals, both inside and out, but also that some of them are made from deer antler, and that to make a tubular bead of deer antler was a very elaborate process involving cutting off a little rectangle from the outer part, somehow or other softening it, curving it around into a cylinder, and using it.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And then we find these because you can identify them very easily with the sort of gap along one side of them where the two pieces came together. So we could go on and on about this. In other words, everything is very elaborate that's done on them. And we're just really finding out about these people.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
In the case of the Boyne Valley, you know, there are, I can't remember the number, but hundreds of these massive stones were collected to build the megalithy tombs. And that in itself is an enormous amount of labor, as you can imagine.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Well, the megalithic tradition was very much part of Western Europe, and it seems to have emerged around the same time that farming arrived. Now, there are megaliths in other parts of the world, like Japan and so forth. I think we'll just leave those aside and just deal with the Western European ones. That's okay.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And these ones in Western Europe, I think they spread from North Africa, certainly the Mediterranean islands, Iberia, France, especially Brittany, and then up into Ireland, Britain, some of the Scandinavian countries as well. So it's quite an extensive area. And within that, there is this passage tomb tradition, this particular type of tomb that has a passage leading into a chamber.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And they're actually found across most of that area as well. But certainly in the Irish context, they are the most famous ones. And of course, in Britain, Orkney, especially Mace Howe, and the various other ones there in Orkney.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Both of them are very well known, and there seems to be a certain connection as well between Orkney and the Boyne Valley in the Stone Age, in the Neolithic. And of course, we're dealing with a period around 5,000 years ago. These tombs, especially the ones in the Boyne Valley, appear to have been built maybe sometime around 3,300 B.C., 3,200 B.C.,
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And the Orkney ones are approximately the same time as well. And there seems to be some linkage because... And I'm switching from Newgrange to Nouth here for a second. I'm sorry about this. Just at Nouth, it's a more extensive arrangement of tombs because as well as the big mound at Nouth...
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
You have 18 smaller ones, but also within the big mound at Nouth, you had two tombs, an east and a west tomb. And within the east tomb at Nouth, there was a very spectacular mace head found, which was featured in the Stonehenge exhibition in the British Museum a couple of years ago. And that may said, everything about it would suggest that it may well come from Britain and maybe from Orkney.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Most likely it is from Britain that it would have come from. It's probably Orkney.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
People, as you say, typically throw out that piece of information or piece of data. The interesting thing about Newgrange and indeed Stonehenge, maybe more so Stonehenge than Newgrange, is that these sites, they weren't built in a day. You know, they evolved, you know.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And in the case of Stonehenge, it's very interesting there that we know that Stonehenge evolved, you know, from the different phases of activity there and so on. Newgrange looks more like a job of work, so to speak, in the sense that, you know, there's a certain integration in the way it was built. And Newgrange, the actual mound at Newgrange is surrounded by a circle of standing stones.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And these standing stones, we assume it was a circle, only some of them remain. But the diameter across those standing stones is approximately the same as the diameter across Stonehenge, you know, the enclosing henge there, you know. And it would appear that the evolution of Stonehenge encapsulates more or less the same timeframe as the evolution of Newgrange as a place.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
In the sense that Stonehenge began quite early, there was earlier activity on the site, and then it evolved into the great monument we know today. Now that is later the Newgrange. But the actual site itself and its use as a special place would be around the same time as Newgrange, possibly even earlier in some cases. So I'm not sure that's slightly complicated.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
But, you know, I think I would like to give credit to Stonehenge, so to speak, as well as Newgrange.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Well, Newgrange is located in County Meath in Ireland, north of Dublin, and it's a particularly fertile area of Ireland with very good land. So I suppose that's the first thing to bear in mind. And through it flows the River Boyne, which is not the longest river in Ireland, but for some reason seems to be the one that mythologically seems to have been the most significant over time.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And the sort of same name as the river itself, this goddess was the mother of Aengus. And you mentioned Bru in the Boynia. The Bru is actually the stronghold or the sort of palace or the homestead of the god Aengus. It's the fortress of the Boyne, so to speak.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
and it's supposed to have been inhabited by the god Aengus, a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the pre-Celtic people and the understanding of those people, or the pre-Irish, really. Aengus was the son of Boyne herself, of the river Boyne, and of the great Celtic god, the doctor of the great Tuatha Dé Danann god. So in mythology alone, it's actually a very significant place.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Now, what's very interesting about that is that The other sites in the Boyne Valley are Nouth and Douth, and indeed the newly discovered site at Douth Hall, which is underneath an 18th century period house. These three sites, they all show signs of a lot of activity in early medieval times, with souterrains, underground passages being built into the mounds.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
In the case of Nouth, houses were being built on the edge of the mound, and indeed mounds part of the mound and all of this early medieval activity in the case of now caused quite some instability within the megalithic tomb because they were robbing stones and so on they were in and out of the tombs writing graffiti in them But strangely enough, not at Newgrange.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
There's no evidence at Newgrange of this sort of intensive early medieval activity. And I often wonder if that's to do with the fact that it's associated with this god Angus and it's a very special place in mythology. So it may well have protected the site. So that's, so to speak.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And the reason I'm going on about this is that the Boyne, of course, seems to have been a key factor in the location of these tombs. Because the other group of tombs is at Loch Crewe, over in the western part of County Meath. And these overlook the valley of the Blackwater River, which actually is a tributary of the River Boyne.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
So the whole network seems to have been significant, the Boyne, but especially the River Boyne itself. Then the other aspect of this is that the River Boyne flows eastwards through County Meath from Slane towards Drogheda, some miles to the east of Slane. And on its way, it meets a ridge, which caused it to turn south and to loop around, giving us the famous name, the Bend of the Boyne.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
The Bend in the Boyne, or the Bend of the Boyne, yes. And this ridge is a sort of an east-west ridge. And on that ridge, the three highest points on that ridge, These are the points at which Newgrange and Nouth and Douth are built. So the landscapes play the key role.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
Absolutely. And indeed, I think you've touched on something really significant that apart from visiting these sites individually, a wonderful coach tour is to drive along the south side of the River Boyne, the other side of the river, And you actually see the three tombs on the ridges above you, especially Newgrange and Nalthis down now particularly, as you're actually traveling along.
The Ancients
Prehistoric Ireland: Newgrange
And the road runs along the valley of the river just beside the river. The vista from the river would have been very significant and the journey up the river. Of course, the other thing about the River Boyne is that it's a very strong fishing river. And presumably it was like this always as well, salmon and so forth, you know. And eel, I think, might have played a role as well.