Our landscapes tell the stories of island’s past
Cork, which has one of Ireland’s richest archaeological landscapes, had a human legacy long before the arrival of Christianity in the fifth century. William O’Brien’s book distills the 8,000 years from the end of the last ice age to the beginnings of Irish Christianity into an accessible, illuminating, and highly detailed work that sheds light on the earliest life in what is now Co Cork.
O’Brien, head of archaeology at UCC, takes us on an exploration of the county before the written word. This is not a guide book of the ancient sites, although one could certainly use it as such, but is a work based in scholarship that aims to aid the general reader in understanding the county’s past. Rich with illustrations, photographs, and maps, it is a brilliant guide to the earliest periods of Irish history.
The book takes its name from the Greek geographer Ptolemy’s second-century map of the known world, which includes one of the earliest known representations of Ireland. Our little island was Ierne and the people who lived in Cork were the Iverni.
There is a fine chronological structure to the book, with distinct sections on eras and events (eg, the first metalworkers, death and religion). And it is by no means a catalogue of historical monuments or the dry recitations of site locations and excavation reports. He draws on seed/pollen data as well as material remains such as copper axeheads and stone arrowheads. One can’t help but be intrigued by the prehistoric bling in some burials, with gold plaques, neckpieces, bracelets, and rings showcasing the wealth of certain members of a presumed aristocracy. However, many of the pieces found in the 19th century are now lost, so only fragments remain.
It is always fascinating how much can be learned about a long-vanished culture by what it left behind — or wasn’t, in some cases. For example, the Neolithic houses found in Cork — the foundations of one were found at Barnagrove during the building of the N22 Ballincollig bypass, for instance — have generally been found to have little domestic rubbish, or other such detritus, suggesting the inhabitants had left the building after thoroughly cleaning the site. The weapons, ornaments, and other objects arriving from about 1200BC are evidence of sustained contact with continental Europe as well as a new social movements and turmoil.
The chapter on burial and religious practice in the Bronze Age is particularly interesting because it represents the sort of investigative/reconstructive practice mentioned above. In this case, we have no written records of the changing customs or beliefs, and so all we know is what we can tell from the grave goods, grave patterns, cemeteries, and occasional re-use of sites such as the cairn at Carntighera near Fermoy. There is a particularly good section on the abundance of standing stones in the county, each with their own distinct characteristics and surroundings. It also focuses firmly on what we can tell about early religion through the artifacts and orientation of sites to the sun at different points in the year, as opposed to any overly mystical or fanciful explanations.
As it happens, we have the Celtic Tiger to thank for our knowledge of many Bronze Age and other prehistoric sites, as roadworks and pipe laying across the county unearthed about 80 sites, such as the remains of houses from about 3,500 years ago on the route of the M8 near Mitchelstown. A quirky cup shaped like a face mask was found during excavations on the relief road there in 2004, and photos are reproduced in the book of the amusing little fellow who appears to have a large nose but no mouth. It looks to be unique in Irish and British archaeology, and makes one wonder at the creativity of those early peoples, as well as what else may have been lost through the millennia.
There are about 16,000 archaeological sites in Co Cork, about 40% of which are prehistoric. Many were for rituals or ceremonies (people never lived in a stone circle, for instance) and most dwellings, largely built of wood and perishable materials, would have left no obvious remains on the landscape. So it makes sense for O’Brien to note that it would be a mistake to form an understanding of where people lived solely on the visible monuments. Many have been destroyed due to farming or forestry. Others have been drowned by the sea, which has risen about 3m or 4m in the past 4,000 years.
Some of the monuments might otherwise be simply piles of rocks on the landscape. One collection of large flat stones at Arderawinny, off the Schull-Goleen road on the Mizen Peninsula, is revealed to be a 6,000-year-old portal tomb (think a miniature of the dolmens in the Burren), one of the oldest field monuments in the county. Another collection near Rossscarbery in West Cork overlooks a main road but would otherwise be unremarked as rocks on a hill covered with brush. A map of the Beara Peninsula shows a broad scattering of ancient field walls, many of which are now barely lines of stone over boggy slopes. A read through O’Brien’s book will make you want to “read” the landscape in a whole new light — for instance, are those standing stones by the shore natural or what’s left of an ancient tomb?
The text is all the more important for the general reader because, as O’Brien notes before the text proper, most of the sites are on private property and so might otherwise be unknown to the public at large.
While there is a clear and successful effort to cover as much as possible, while not overloading the reader with technical detail, occasionally one could do with some clarification of terms. For example, there is “the so-called bipolar technique” for working flint into tools, which goes unexplained (placing the flint on a hard object and hammering down with another rock to break it into smaller pieces). Elsewhere, there is “the so-called Linkardstown type” of cairn tomb (a paved chamber enclosed by stones which is covered by a slope of rocks and has a capstone on top). However, to be fair this sort of reference is rare enough throughout the text.
I found the book easy to read and difficult to put down, and feel much better informed about the earliest eras of Ireland now than I did before I started it.
These sorts of books are always wonderful, not because they are just the story of a particular place but rather because they are part of the story of us as a nation. I would not recommend trying to absorb this book in a single sitting. Rather, explore it at your own pace to get a fuller understanding of where we came from and the world that went before us.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
