This book opens with a full and, rightly, very complimentary biography of its honorand. As someone who has known John Waddell since he was a student working at Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland, I am very pleased to see it. We both enjoyed the weekly trips that Claire and Michael O’Kelly put on for their students, and several of my slides have John standing in them to provide scale. Since then, he has gone far in the world of archaeology and of university administration, but when I see him these days at meetings, such as for the Bronze Age Studies Group, he is still the same friendly and obliging young man he was back in 1967. He even looks the same—age has not caught up with him!
The essays in this book are nearly all written by his immediate colleagues, which means that most are focused on north-western Ireland and particularly the area of Rathcrogan in which he, himself, has done so much good and innovative work. Stefan Burgh and Robert Hensey’s chapter on ‘Capital fellows: capstones and potential capstones at the Carrowmore megalithic complex’ is a useful analysis of the types of stones chosen here as capstones. Many of these small-chamber tombs have lost their capstone and this is an attempt to identify some that may be lying nearby. It also considers where the desired size and type of stone might have been found originally and how they might have been brought to the site. However, no ideas are given on how they reach their final position.
‘Going to sea in a lunula’ is an intriguing chapter by Mary Cahill, suggesting that the lunula (a gold necklace shaped like a crescent moon) represents the sun, which in many legends is thought to have been carried through the sky in a boat. The lunula shape can represent both the sun and its boat and she compares the limited elements of decoration on lunulae with the various ways in which leather and wooden boats are sewn—ways of overstitching and cross stitching. I am not sure that we have any boats surviving from the early Bronze Age, but undoubtedly boats must have existed earlier to bring farmers to Britain and Ireland in the Neolithic. Reading this, I learnt more about boats than lunulae, but it was an interesting read.
In the chapter ‘From Prehistory to mediaeval: living among the ancestors in the Burren’ Michelle Comber and Noel McCarthy discuss the significance of the re-use of monuments. They look at the Neolithic tombs at Poulnabrone and Poulawack with Middle Bronze Age child burials and notable enlargements of cairns; Creeragh, a double enclosure with a later cist occupying most of its interior; Caherballykinvarga fort with added chevaux de fries (a type of stone protection); and Cashel at Caherconnell extended to enclose an earlier cairn with cists: one prehistoric and another early medieval.
The manager of the Rathcrogan Visitor Centre, Daniel Curley, attempts in ‘Leaving their mark on the land: evidence for the heroic narratives as seen in the archaeology and toponymy of Machaire Connacht’ to repopulate the area with its cast of known heroic figures, immortalised in surviving place and monument names. It is well illustrated with photographs from the centre.
Joe Fenwick undertakes ‘Unravelling the spiral: passage tomb alignment, related kerbstone art and cycles of monumental construction at Brú na Bóinne’ and discusses in considerable detail the ways (measured, calculated or observed) in which prehistoric people, without scientific instruments, might have identified the solstice and equinoctial alignments which we can recognise in their monuments. The solstice, which can be observed in the sky, was more accurate than the counting of days to the equinox. The enlargement of Knowth is particularly interesting because the eastern cruciform chamber’s added passage is accurately extended, but the western one is not. It had to be corrected by a curved addition. The nature of the decoration on entrance blocking stones is also discussed, not only at Knowth but at the other large monuments near the Boyne valley, Newgrange and Dowth. These stones all feature vertical lines, unusual in such curvaceous art, and might indicate a blocked entrance. Searches for such at Newgrange have not been successful so far.
Carleton Jones’s contribution on ‘Identity in Early Bronze Age western Ireland: a study of pottery and landscape’ discusses the distribution of ‘Bowl and Vase Food vessels’ and Wedge tombs in the area west of the Shannon and around Galway Bay, with a lot of Cemetery Barrows—that is, a lot of burials in one barrow. This may be the reason why the dating of these burials and their varying pots is debatable. The Wedge tombs are judged to be built around 2500–2300 cal BC and both the Bowl and Vase Food vessels appear in the period 2200–1900 cal BC in Fenwick’s view (this volume). The article has two appendices: 1) a list of 47 burials and 2) a list of 25 dates.
As an old woman who was never taught Greek, I can only quote Molière and say: “Excuser moi, monsieur, je ne comprehend pas le grec” (Les Précieuses Ridicules). Because of this I cannot say much about the introduction to ‘Throwing the king out with the bathwater: a contribution to the debate concerning archaeology and early vernacular literature’ by Conor Newman. But the text leads then to discussions of incest at Newgrange; a birth tale of Lugard Red Stripes; and an interesting concern with bees in ancient Europe, but without much hard evidence. The focus then moves back to Ireland to the famous image of the man from Armagh Cathedral with his hand on his shoulder, who might be an image of Mithras. Bull symbolism is present in Europe, Britain and Ireland and maybe, through the Roman army and Mithras, bull sacrifice as well. But was bull sacrifice a living tradition when St Patrick tamed, ate and then resuscitated a notorious bull—or was it just an early medieval story surviving to be re-purposed by Christianity?
The chapter ‘The Mac Diarmada inauguration site at Croghan (Cruachán), County Roscommon’ by Márín Ní Dhonnchadha is a story of kings and poets. Most kings had a traditional inauguration site, normally a mound or notable landscape feature, but the identity of some have become disputed. The use of Croghan traditionally began in the twelfth century but the best-recorded instances, both usurpations, are in 1315 and 1478. All kings are closely related to each other, hence the disputations. One story of Toirdhealbhach Ua Conchobhair who became King of Connacht in 1106 and maintained his kingship for 50 years is interesting because it is so modern. It relates to a fragment of the True Cross brought to Ireland in 1123, being sent in a great circuit around his lands, in its new reliquary, the famous Cross of Cong, still to be seen in the National Museum. The role of poets in recording such things is very important and the means through which we still know of the kings.
William O’Brien looks in his contribution at ‘Ogham stones, souterrains and ancestral memory in Early Mediaeval Ireland’. The Ogham alphabet arises from a learned class—in Ireland and in parts of Wales to which the Irish spread (though O’Brien leaves Wales out). It survives in Ireland in manuscripts into the late medieval period. It appears in stone inscriptions from the fourth to sixth centuries; but is superseded by Latin inscriptions by the seventh century. By the eighth century they were being used occasionally to roof souterrains, especially in Cork and interestingly the renowned Augustus Pitt Rivers was involved with one of the excavations in 1866 which had three inscribed Ogham stones in its roof. The final section deals with whether or not the Ogham stones are grave makers. In most cases, they give only a name and sometimes descent—so this might imply a record of ownership rather than burial. In Ireland, very few bodies have been found in close association with Ogham stones. If Wales had been considered, where bi-lingual Latin/Irish inscriptions are found, this question might have had a different answer, since the Latin part normally refers to a burial.
The book concludes with Keiran O’Conor’s chapter ‘An indefatigable field-worker: Lady Dorothy Lowry-Corry (1885–1967)’. Lady Dorothy was the daughter of the fourth Earl of Belmore and lived at Castle Coole in County Fermanagh for much of her life. She came from a distinguished land-owning family and on her mother’s side was related to the British Prime Minister, Gladstone. Her education came mainly from the castle’s large library which reflected the interests of her grandfather and father. Her own contribution to local history developed in the 1930s, with her first writings mostly about medieval churches but her interests were wide. In 1935 the newly formed government of Northern Ireland was considering a ‘Survey of the Ancient Monuments of Northern Ireland’ and Lady Dorothy was on the distinguished committee which oversaw this work. In fact, she wrote nearly all the material relating to County Fermanagh; she visited and described about 208 of the county’s most important buildings and monuments and also encouraged archaeological work in the county by other notable archaeologists.
