Mediterranean link to north Kerry’s archaeological finds

NEW light has been throw on the archaeological importance of the north Kerry area following last year’s discovery of a brooch in a turf fire.

Prior to the find, most of the attention from tourist- driven archaeology focused on west and south Kerry.

However, the chance discovery of a seventh-century brooch with the Greek symbol for Christ, in the remnants of a turf fire in a range near Ballylongford last year, was one of a number of finds that has switched attention to the north Kerry area of the Shannon estuary.

It points to a fascinating Christian community with possible links to the eastern Mediterranean.

That’s according to a paper written by the archaeologist attached to the National Museum, which was first approached about the brooch.

Archaeologist Griffin Murray, a graduate of UCC and the curator of the Kerry County Museum, has drawn together a number of recent finds as part of his paper on the brooch. It was found on the morning of July 18 last when Sheila Edgeworth of Martara, Ballylongford, was cleaning out her range.

Her husband Pat Joe believed it to be a brooch.

The turf was from the Edgeworths’ bog at Tullahennell North, where turf is cut with a track machine and processed into sods using a hopper.

“The survival of the brooch through this process, not to mention being subsequently thrown into a Stanley Range, is remarkable,” Murray wrote in the North Munster Antiquarian Journal.

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the area of north Kerry had specific links with the eastern Mediterranean but it must have certainly benefited from its proximity to the estuary and so was probably open to a lot of influence through time.”