Issue 78

September 2004

Contents

news

Third Neolithic longhouse found in Scotland

Rare Medieval track excavated

Decorated shears trimmed Celtic hair

Iron Age 'bender' in Margate

Barrow saved from walkers

In Brief

features

Pagans
Robert J Wallis and Jenny Blain report from the other side

Boscombe grave
The truth behind the latest Stonehenge Beaker finds

Digging up art
Clive Waddington reveals first dates for British rock art

Bronze bog hoard
Surprising objects in prehistoric hoard in Armagh

Seahenge story
Mark Brennand excavates on the beach

Forest fire
Peter Fowler describes new discoveries in the Languedoc

letters

Ethnicity, mysticism, Roman disputes and hedges

opinion

Peter Drewett bemoans the lack of field skills

Spoilheap

Neil Mortimer fights stone circle power on Ebay

books

Past Poetic: Archaeology in the Poetry of WB Yeats & Seamus Heaney by Christine Finn

Antiquaries: the Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain by Rosemary Sweet

Trethurgy: Excavations at Trethurgy Round, St Austell: Community & Status in Roman & Post-Roman Cornwall by Henrietta Quinnell

Urban Growth & the Medieval Church: Gloucester & Worcester by Nigel Baker & Richard Holt

Behaviour Behind Bones: the Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status & Identity by Sharon Jones O’Day, Wim Van Neer & Anton Ervynck

Public Archaeology by Nick Merriman

The Victoria History of the Counties of England. Stafford vol IX: Burton-Upon-Trent by Institute of Historical Research

Archaeology, Ritual, Religion by Timothy Insoll

Charter Quay: the Archaeology of Kingston’s Riverside by Wessex Archaeology

Melrose Abbey by Richard Fawcett & Richard Oram

Places of Special Virtue: Megaliths in the Neolithic Landscape of Wales by Vicki Cummings & Alasdair Whittle

Human Evolution Cookbook by Harold L Dibble, Dan Williamson & Brad M Evans

CBA update

tv in ba

Looking back on a season of wars and battles

science

Chief archaeological scientist Sebastian Payne's new column

my archaeology

Philip Beale left his job for an archaeological experiment

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

features

Treasure in the bog

Richard Warner, Philip Macdonald and John Ó Néill report on a particularly unusual group of Bronze Age objects found at Tamlaght, Co Armagh

Several archaeologists up to their elbows in gloopy peat in February does not sound much like the Time Team image of an excavation, especially as they were all aware that the ‘treasure’ whose burial details they were there to discover had already been removed and was lying in the Ulster Museum’s conservation laboratory. But so important was this find it was imperative that, discomfort notwithstanding, the excavators should recover proof of its discovery and every possible surviving detail of its context.

There were several reasons for this, in addition to normal good practice. In the first place Irish archaeologists seldom get the chance to excavate Bronze Age hoard sites – the overwhelming majority of known hoards are quite without any useful recorded context. Secondly, two of the objects in this find were unique in Ireland – indeed in the British Isles. Thirdly, this was a ‘treasure-hunted’ find, and although we had no reason to doubt the veracity of the finder, others might not be so trusting. Finally it is the first find consisting of several bronze objects to have turned up in Northern Ireland since the new version of the Treasure Act came into force that widens the definition of ‘treasure’ to include non-precious metals.

The objects comprise a bronze sword of the Late Bronze Age leaf-shaped blade variety; a bronze bowl containing a fragmentary bronze cup; and a small bronze ring. They had been carefully placed in a roughly north-south line in the surface of the bog, parallel to and about a metre away from its edge. There were no traces of disturbance and nothing to suggest that they had accompanied a burial. Nor were the objects buried in a way or in a location that would imply an intention to recover them. Many Bronze Age objects, of bronze and gold, have been found in Irish bogs, and although one is always wary of the ritual explanation it seems quite justified in this case.

The sword is an early, purely Irish type which, by comparison with the reliable British metalwork chronology, ought to date to the centuries either side of 1,100 bc. The other examples of this type cluster around Lough Neagh, suggesting a local workshop.

Interestingly less than a kilometre from the find-spot of the hoard is an artificial ‘ritual’ pond (the King’s Stables) which excavation some years ago showed was dug between about 1,150 and 1,000 bc. Associated with this pond were many fragments of clay moulds for the manufacture of bronze leaf-shaped swords. Unfortunately these were too fragmentary to determine whether the swords made in them belonged to the Tamlaght type but the likely date of the sword fits the date bracket for the pond.

Most exciting are the two small bronze vessels, quite unique for the British Isles. The types represented – a Fuchsstadt bowl and a Jenisovice cup – are widely distributed over central Europe, from France to the Carpathians and north to Denmark. The bowl probably originated in south-east Germany and the cup in the area around the Czech Republic. Where they occasionally occur together in their homeland – in graves and hoards – the contexts belong to the phase called Hallstatt B1, now believed to date to the 11th century bc.

The bowl was well-preserved, but the cup it contained was in many fragments and seemingly impossible to reconstruct - until we noticed that both shape and decoration had been recorded by the peat that had trickled into the bowl and hardened. A company specialising in laser tomography, Kestrel3D, produced three-dimensional laser images of the peat surfaces which will assist us greatly.

The vessels’ certain date confirms our suspected date for the sword, and gives a firm date for an important Irish Late Bronze Age metalwork stage (the ‘Roscommon phase’). As we have seen above, this is also the date of the ritual pond not far away. Even more interesting is that a large, triple-ditched hillfort less than a kilometre away, Haughey’s Fort, was also built and occupied between 1,150 and 1,000 bc, as recent excavation has showed. This hillfort gives us a fine context for the person who owned the sword and bowls, or for those who buried them. The Late Bronze Age landscape of this small piece of Co Armagh is now one of the most interesting in these islands.

Warner is keeper of archaeology and ethnography and acting head of the Division Of Human History, Ulster Museum, Belfast. Macdonald and Ó Néill are fieldwork directors at the Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast

CBA web:

British Archaeology

CBA Briefing

Fieldwork
Conferences
Noticeboard
Courses & lectures
CBA Network
Grants & awards

CBA homepage