The Numinous Aquatic water cult and society in Irish prehistory

Conn Herriott

A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirements of the Master of Arts degree ‘Maritime Archaeology & History’, in the Department of Archaeology & Anthropology (Faculty of Arts).

September 2005 c. 16, 000 words

ABSTRACT

This dissertation investigates the ways in which aquatic places – be they the sea, rivers, lakes, bogs, springs, wells or artificial constructions – were symbolically and ritually used throughout Irish prehistory to express religious beliefs. A further concern is what this numinous aquatic can tell us about the prehistoric societies of Ireland. Provided is an interpretative synthesis of previously disjointed evidence, of topics commonly discussed separately but felt by the author to be most relevant to each other and collectively enlightening of a fascinating subject in Irish prehistory and maritime studies. Amongst these topics are hunter-gatherer cosmologies, Neolithic-Bronze Age petroglyphs, monumental incorporation of the aquatic, trends in the practice of object deposition in watery places, and bog bodies. The ideologies underpinning these phenomena are also explored. The ultimate aim of this dissertation is thus to demonstrate the fundamental features of aquatic-associated cult on a general diachronic level across Irish prehistory.

For my grandmother, Faye Marie O’Bryan, who made a great year possible.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A number of people helped me with this paper. As well as my grandmother,

my parents aided me with the myriad little things that make slightly-less little

things possible. My mother saved me with some last-minute proofreading.

Likewise, my brothers Fionn and Oisín saw me out of some minor and yet

major dead ends. Kimberly Monk and Joshua Pollard gave me their full

attention and useful advice whenever I bothered them. Katharine Simms, of

the Department of History at Trinity College Dublin, conjured up some

valuable bibliographic guidance, as did Aidan O’Sullivan of the Department

of Archaeology at University College Dublin, and Peter Harbison of the Royal

Irish Academy. I thank also the many archaeologists and writers upon whose

shoulders we students totter. Most importantly of all, as well as producing all

the charts and proofreading the text, my love Nina gave me her full support

and understanding in everything. But don’t worry; I will not get carried away.

All of this help has been important. Its calibre is not to be judged by any flaws

or discrepancies in this work. For them, I owe acknowledgement only to

myself.

AUTHOR’S DECLARATION

I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the Regulations of the University of Bristol. The work is original except where indicated by special reference in the text and no part of the dissertation has been submitted for any other degree. Nor has it been presented to any other University for examination either in the United Kingdom or overseas. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author and in no way represent those of the University of Bristol. SIGNED: DATE:

CONTENTS

Illustrations…………………………………………………………………………...i

Map of Ireland………………………………………………………………………iii

Chapter One: Introduction………………………………………………………...1

Chapter Two: The Mesolithic……………………………………………………...5 The socio-economic background…………………………………………………5 Mesolithic religion…………………………………………………………………..8 The aquatic in Mesolithic cosmologies…………………………………………10 The Mesolithic: only a little fearful………………………………………………14

Chapter Three: The Neolithic……………………………………………………16 Mesolithic bricks and Neolithic needs…………………………………………..16 The nucleus of Neolithic religion………………………………………………...17 ‘Plop’, but for more than mere luck……………………………………………..19 Petroglyphs and the aquatic……………………………………………………..25 ‘Land: water’……………………………………………………………………….29 The Neolithic: ancestors and wet feet…………………………………………..31

Chapter Four: The Bronze Age………………………………………………….33 Change, no change……………………………………………………………….33 Middle Bronze Age developments………………………………………………37 The kitchen sink…………………………………………………………………..40 The Bronze Age: diversifying, centralising……………………………………..46

Chapter Five: The Iron Age……………………………………………………...47 The cultural origins of Iron Age aquatic cult……………………………………47 New sources………………………………………………………………………49 Protohistoric religious interaction with the aquatic…………………………….50 Aquatic offerings in colour……………………………………………………….51 ‘Capital punishment’………………………………………………………………55 Business and pleasure in Iron Age aquatic cult……………………………….57 The Iron Age: a fuller vista……………………………………………………….60

Chapter Six: Conclusion………………………………………………………….63 The lifespan of death……………………………………………………………..63 Weather and the wealthy………………………………………………………...64 The numinous aquatic: all seas have shores………………………………….66

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………….68

ILLUSTRATIONS Cover: from irishwater.com CHAPTER ONE Figure 1 (page 4): The Shannon estuary; A range of objects from the Lough Gara foreshore (Sligo); Lough Gur (Limerick). CHAPTER TWO Figure 2 (page 7): Mesolithic/Neolithic polished axes from the River Bann (Antrim); Medieval fishtrap reconstruction; Subsistence strategy recreation from Ferriter’s Cove (Kerry). Figure 3 (page 10): Reconstructed view of the shell midden from Oronsay in Scotland. CHAPTER THREE Figure 4 (page 20): Neolithic axehead and macehead recovery contexts (three charts). Figure 5 (page 24): Neolithic stone object deposition from Moynagh Lough (Meath); Human skull fragment from Carrigdirty (Limerick); Reconstruction of Carrigdirty site; Stone macehead from Knowth passage grave (Meath). Figure 6 (page 28): Atlantic rock art distribution in Ireland; View from the Mevagh petroglyphs (Donegal); View from the Doagh carvings (Donegal); Derrynablaha composition (Kerry). Figure 7 (page 29): Some motifs common to Irish passage graves and landscape rock carvings. Figure 8 (page 31): Late Neolithic ritual landscape at Brú na Bóinne (Meath), with artificial pools. CHAPTER FOUR Figure 9 (page 34): Typological and locational patterns in Early Bronze Age deliberate object group deposition (four charts).

Figure 10 (page 38): Middle Bronze Age weaponry find contexts (two charts). Figure 11 (page 41): Late Bronze Age finds from Dowris (Offaly); Goldwork from Harmondstown bog (Kildare). Figure 12 (page 42): Late Bronze Age sword and basal-looped spearhead find contexts (two charts). Figure 13 (page 44): Boat model from Broighter (Derry); Paddles from Clonfinlough Late Bronze Age lake settlement (Offaly). Figure 14 (page 45): Plan of King’s Stables (Armagh); Map of Kings Stables and Navan fort (Armagh). CHAPTER FIVE Figure 15 (page 47): La Tène objects from Lisnacrogher (Antrim). Figure 16 (page 54): Wooden figurine from Shercock (Cavan); Wooden head from the Seine source in France; Gundestrup cauldron; Gundestrup cauldron detail; Late Bronze Age-Iron Age cauldron from Fourknocks bog (Meath). Figure 17 (page 56): Gallagh Man; Reconstruction of the Gallagh Man, in original context, at death. Figure 18 (page 59): Depiction of a horse swimming contest at Lough Owel (Westmeath). Figure 19 (page 62): Distribution of archaeological sites at Aughris (Sligo); Maritime landscape of Aughris (Mayo).

MAP OF IRELAND

(from islands.com).

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

This is a study of the ways in which prehistoric Irish interactions with the

numinous – that is, religion – made use of aquatic places. As will hopefully

be conveyed, it is a fascinating subject. But why is it important? The theme of

the numinous aquatic washes up only here and there in Irish prehistoric

studies. More and more frequently, books and papers in this as in other fields

of European archaeology have made reference to the possibility that certain

sets of evidence point to ritual use of watery places – the sea, rivers, lakes,

bogs, springs, wells or constructed aquatic sites – at one time or another. A

fine example are the quantities of Bronze and Iron Age metal objects that

have been removed from aquatic places across Ireland and Europe (Figure

1). But major scholarly works of recent decades, such as Harbison’s Pre-

Christian Ireland (1988) or Raftery’s Pagan Celtic Ireland (1994) have

overwhelmingly just put this and other important trends down to some vague

sort of water cult. Now, through awareness of theoretical and interpretive

developments elsewhere in Europe, discussion of ritual and religion in Irish

prehistory has advanced somewhat in recent years, with the result that those

late prehistory metalwork concentrations in aquatic places have specifically

and convincingly been linked with burial rites and warrior ideology (Cooney &

Grogan 1999). But despite such interpretive maturing, religious interaction

with watery places remains a theme touched upon only occasionally in

modern scholarship, usually in connection with the subjects of cultural

change and technological development that have traditionally dominated

insular prehistoric studies.

This research bias is largely born of a long-held popular assumption of the

Irish that our island was throughout history as agriculturally-focused as it has

been since post-medieval times. Some of our conclusions will show that

there is much truth to be found in this view, but that is not to say that it has

not confounded the approximation to a more full understanding of early

Ireland: to use a more blatant example than that of metalwork interpretation,

the lack of a working national maritime museum does not bode well for those

keen on investigating water-related historical themes.

Having said all that, wetland and maritime archaeology in Ireland have been

slowly receiving more and more attention since the late 1980s. As well as

some fine studies of vessels and boatbuilding traditions in prehistoric and

historic times – most recently, Breen and Forsythe’s excellent Boats and

shipwrecks of Ireland (2004) – important work has been done on coastal and

lacustrine archaeology (for example, O’Sullivan 1998 and 2001). But as

elsewhere globally, in terms of research questions Irish maritime

archaeology has remained largely separate from its terrestrial sibling. The

situation here continues to improve but there remains some way to go until

acceptable maritime-terrestrial integration is achieved.

This paper will address these two research inadequacies – the frequent

failure in Ireland to seriously incorporate maritime themes in questions

concerned with the rich tapestry of our heritage, and the resulting fragmented

and incomplete manner in which prehistoric evidence for interaction with the

numinous aquatic has been looked at. By so doing, our discussion will also

seek to blur the interface between maritime and non-maritime archaeology;

neither the reality of religion nor that of the human past can conform to our

neat academic subdivisions. The scope of the topic is indeed large; to

analyse all the evidence for aquatic-related ritual activity over the full course

of Irish prehistory – some seven and a half millennia – might seem too tall an

order for an MA dissertation. But this scale of study is exactly what is

necessary in order to make sense of the hitherto disjointed array of relevant

information; its size is the very point of my thesis. Only by placing them in

their larger religious and socio-cultural contexts will rituals receive a most

realistic interpretation; and only by taking a broad diachronic view can we

trace the vital patterns of continuity and change that reveal so much about

the nature of all human activities. I have not been as greedy as I might have

been: Part Two, taking the discussion up to the present, will have to wait until

next year.

The paper structure will adhere to periodic divisions, whilst acknowledging

the considerable socio-cultural overlaps that also describe Irish prehistoric

reality. The first chapter will deal with primary and comparative evidence for

the ritual and cosmological use of the aquatic during the Mesolithic (c.7000–

4500 BC). The second chapter, concerned with Neolithic developments

(c.4500–2300 BC), will lead from these roots but will also look at many new

phenomena. Amongst these we will be most concerned with water offerings,

rock art and the incorporation of watery places into the monumental

landscape. The following chapter is – somewhat unnaturally, given the

degree of ritual continuity from the Neolithic – restricted to the Bronze Age

(c.2300–600 BC) and the main development of aquatic depositions. Yet this

period represents a vital transitional phase for Irish prehistoric society. Socio-

culturally sharing much in common with the latter stages of this transition is

the Iron Age (c.300 BC–AD 500), the subject of the fourth and final data

chapter. But our Iron Age discussion will be interestingly broadened, for it will

in part make use of written sources.

On this numinous voyage, we will see much continuity and much change

through time. I am convinced that both resulted from quite particular stimuli,

and that common themes can be found in many religious uses of watery

places throughout Irish prehistory. I believe that central to this were death-

related ideologies, religiously symbolised and ritually expressed in a spiritual

environment increasingly shaped by social hierarchy pressures. Readers will

become aware of the details of this central element of my thesis. But whether

they agree or not with the conclusions towards which my study has washed

me, I dare to hope this dissertation will make some modest contribution to

the harmonising of archaeological research, and to the furthering of cognitive

themes within maritime studies.

Figure 1 (from top to bottom): The Shannon estuary; A range of objects, dating from the Neolithic to medieval times, found on the Lough Gara foreshore (Sligo); And

Lough Gur (Limerick)(from O’Sullivan 2001: 1, O’Sullivan 1998: 25, and O’Sullivan 1998: 67).

CHAPTER TWO

THE MESOLITHIC

Environment does not directly shape the nature of religion. Rather, it dictates

the form of society and, as this latter organism develops, it in turn continually

informs the collective sense of the numinous as to its changing requirements.

These are then manifested in religious practices. It has been shown that day-

to-day life for most Mesolithic Irish people (c.7000–4500 BC) was bound up

with the aquatic: they preferred to live beside water (Woodman 1978;

Cooney & Grogan 1999: 12-13), their diet seems to have been dominated by

fish (van Wijngaarden-Bakker 1989), and much of their travelling would have

been done by boat. Surely all of this interaction with water and watery places

had some impact on the spiritual worldview and sense of the numinous held

by these earliest inhabitants of Ireland, but we cannot directly infer from the

mere omnipresence of water a generalistic aquatic cult. So we begin with a

somewhat awkward chapter. If we are to approximate ourselves to the

fascinating question of Mesolithic religion, traditionally avoided due to a

relative paucity of direct evidence, we must first look at how the Mesolithic

Irish environment and resulting aquatic subsistence orientation dictated the

form of society. Then, in the recently-arisen spirit of rigorous and healthy

speculation that is transforming Mesolithic studies (for example, Larsson et

al. 2003), we can venture into the realm of the cognitive and engage with just

how their lifestyle influenced the religious practices of the earliest Irish. By

this approach will the role of the aquatic in those religious practices most

realistically be revealed.

THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC BACKGROUND

Although through a pattern of seasonal movement a variety of food sources

were exploited in Mesolithic Ireland, the lack of large land mammals meant

that, as mentioned, subsistence strategies were in particular geared towards

effective fishing (Woodman et al. 1999: 149). Thus riverside and coastal

locations were increasingly chosen for settlement and activity (Anderson

1993: 16), and, more illuminating of social structure, tools developed from

being multipurpose to serving specialist woodworking skills required for the

construction of fish traps and weirs for which we also have direct and indirect

evidence from Mount Sandel, Lough Boora, Newferry, Toome and elsewhere

(Cooney & Grogan 1999: 16-17; Kimball: 37; Woodman 1978: 184-185;

Woodman et al. 1999: 135-137). The numerous ethnographic parallels for

such structures being used by non-sedentary groups indicate that

organisation for this activity would have been on a family group or otherwise

collective level (Figure 2) (Zvelebil 2003). What is apparent from the

archaeological record, then, is a development through the course of the Irish

Mesolithic towards orientation of activity around the aquatic environment.

Social ranking on an egalitarian and small scale is indicated by the

coordination of group effort which Late Mesolithic fish weirs and tool

specialisation represent. At the same time, the evidence does not support

the view of complex social hierarchisation: as Kimball has pointed out (2000:

41-42), lacks of large mammals, horticulture convenience and wild food plant

abundance, as well as relatively few nutrition-packed sea mammals, all

presented biogeographical barriers to the social differentiation and sedentism

phenomena brought about by the mid-Holocene stabilisation of sea levels in

Northwest North America, southern Scandinavia and other maritime regions.

This view is corroborated by the dearth of Mesolithic cemeteries in Ireland:

Clark and Neeley (1987: 121-122) persuasively support the argument that

cemetery burial represents a common European Late Mesolithic trend

towards social complexity, brought about by population density increases

and resulting resource competition. The lack of cemetery burials reflects the

lack of these stimuli, undoubtedly a result of the above-mentioned

biogeographical barriers.

The measure of social cohesion which the environment allowed to blossom

amongst the Irish Mesolithic population, relying heavily on aquatic resources,

was impeded by that same environment from developing overmuch. Thus,

the island was inhabited by a low-density network of hunter-gatherer groups,

one estimate putting their total number at around seven thousand (Cooney &

Grogan 1999: 22).

Figure 2 (clockwise from top left): Mesolithic/Neolithic polished stone axes from the River Bann (Antrim); A medieval fishtrap reconstruction giving an idea of how much work might have gone into making and maintaining its Mesolithic equivalent; And a subsistence strategy recreation from Ferriter’s Cove (Kerry) (from Woodman et al. 1999: Plate 5.2, O’Sullivan 2001: 68 and Woodman et al. 1999: 137 respectively).

MESOLITHIC RELIGION

In such a pre-hierarchical social scenario, institutionalisation of spirituality is

likely to have been minimal. Subsequent periods saw social priorities – and

thus religious consciousness – dictated by the controlling of nature through

farming, and keeping of the peace in permanent settlements. The concerns

of Mesolithic groups, by contrast, would primarily have been bound up in

appeasing and harmonising with nature. Ancestral and cosmological myths

would ultimately serve to validate changing social and economic strategies

(contra Zvelebil 2003: 68), but spiritual awareness still rested squarely on the

very real and necessary fact of life that people survived through direct

symbiosis with nature, not yet distanced by domestication and sedentism. Of

course, we shall see that the religious and cosmological importance of

nature, if through an altered worldview, was necessarily carried into the

Neolithic. Likewise, on the earlier side of the blurred domestication interface,

there is a hint of instinctive desire to appropriate nature in the way many

hunter-gatherer societies of the present day symbolically interact with their

surroundings. It is now strongly argued that there is evidence for similar

landscape enculturation in the Mesolithic archaeology of Europe (Larsson et

al. 2003), and I would hold that subsistence and social concerns saw to it

that this symbolic interaction with their surroundings became a fulcrum of

religion for the hunter-gatherers of that period also. Some evidence for this in

Ireland has indeed begun to be studied (Cooney 1999; Cooney & Grogan

1999; Woodman 1989), but the role of the aquatic requires a closer look.

One causal explanation for landscape enculturation, both ancient and

present-day, is territoriality. Appropriation is fundamental to human nature, a

social requirement for which religion is a tool. By maintaining the name of a

place, we maintain familiarity with it. By granting that place a name of

particular cultural connotation, it becomes part of our cosmology and is in

some sense claimed. Associating the land with one’s ancestors adds the

ever-valued weight of years to this claim. A case in point is the Dreamtime

mythology of Aboriginal Australia (Smith 1999). Similarly, the concern for

proximity to water reflected in the locations of most Irish Mesolithic sites

could well represent more than simply a subsistence and internal social

requirement. Woodman (1978: 187-188) suggests the territorial divisions of

tribal Tasmania, aligned with river basins, offer a plausible model for Irish

Mesolithic territoriality, with rivers’ axial role being reinforced by their function

as common routeways and important sources of food. Because distinctions

between the practical and the spiritual – in fact only a very recent fad in

human thought – are not made in hunter-gatherer societies, the territorial

importance of rivers would have granted them symbolic and probable

religious value also. In this context a later claim that the polished stone axes

found at crossing points on the important rivers Shannon, Lee, Blackwater,

and Bann could be Mesolithic holds much interpretive potential (Woodman et

al. 1999: 140). The same role could be proposed for lakes and the sea but,

perhaps significantly, no polished stone axes have been found at any

Mesolithic lake sites and, apart from specimens of domestic context at

Sutton and Dalkey (Kimball 2000: 42-43), Ireland’s dynamic coastline has not

yet yielded any potential remains of territorial ritual. Another possible

expression of territoriality in maritime landscapes has been suggested by

Cummings (2003:75-76), who points to the fact that, as well as serving

functional purposes, many shell middens in western Scotland also reveal an

intention to create some sort of monument on the coast: people came back

to these sites over time, adding to and thus claiming what gradually became

conspicuously-sized mounds. A similar ‘monumental’ role could be proposed

for the shell middens of western Galway, Limerick, Ferriter’s Cove (Kerry),

and elsewhere in Ireland (Figure 3).

It should be added that territoriality has an inward-facing aspect also. For

societies wherein little communal interaction takes place regularly – both

non-sedentary and sedentary, as we shall see – it is necessary to somehow

maintain group identity. This is commonly achieved by seasonal festivals, at

which celebrations, trade, exchange, marriage and rites of passage serve to

strengthen connections, fuse the group and re-affirm a shared identity

(Zvelebil 2003). Many of these vital practices are granted greater weight by

the seal of religion. Accordingly, our interpretations must be made in

awareness of the probability that many Mesolithic acts of landscape

enculturation served dual functions.

Figure 3: A reconstructed view of the shell midden from Oronsay as it would have stood during the Late Mesolithic (from Cummings 2003: 75).

THE AQUATIC IN MESOLITHIC COSMOLOGIES

Territoriality may well have been the major social stimulus for landscape

enculturation, yet the fullness, colour and life of this captivating form of

interaction with the numinous lay in what people actually believed and how

they expressed that belief. Thus, although socially required as territorial

markers, Mesolithic shell middens may actually have been understood as

monuments of remembrance or veneration of ancestors (Cummings: 75-76).

Equally, the polished stone axes found in Irish waters could have been left

there as offerings to some form of transcendent being or ancestral spirit of

the waters – a ritual tradition to be upheld throughout prehistory and

surviving to this day. Similar ideological interpretations are possible for the

six-metre spread of stone slabs placed over a bog on Valencia Island (Kerry)

(Kimball 2000: 48) and other places in the Mesolithic maritime landscape

(Cummings: 76). As repositories or reflections of social identity, such

features are thought of by many hunter-gatherer groups as supporting their

cosmology: Aboriginal Australians consider their environment as a whole to

have been made by their ancestors (Smith 1999: 193-196); for the Arctic

Nenet and the Saami of northern Scandinavia, holy places are where

particular events occurred or are simply unusual and captivating landscape

features; the Wamira of Papua New Guinea grant each stone a life and

history of its own; and for the Ninaiskákis of North America, entire mountains

are holy. Certainly there are countless other examples of this environmental

animation with regard to the sacred aquatic amongst hunter-gatherers, to the

extent that it may be considered virtually a universal feature of this social

form.

To come back to a fundamental issue, that cosmological centrality be

attributed to water is perfectly understandable, given its importance in life

and nourishment, its cleansing properties and its occasional healing powers.

Vitally, watery places generate a sense of liminality, and this can be

expected to have held much weight in Mesolithic Ireland, where as well as

being the greatest food sources, rivers, lakes, pools, springs, bogs and the

sea stood out as being rare open spaces in a heavily wooded landscape.

These various attributes of water and watery places result in hunter-

gatherers incorporating the aquatic into seemingly unrelated aspects of their

belief systems. Nevertheless, I believe that fundamental to many of these

varied expressions are ideological themes rooted in life and death concepts.

Firstly, rivers and the sea are often seen as boundaries between the living

and the dead, transformers, recyclers and symbolic of movement and

journeys. Zvelebil (2003: 69) maintains that there exists a fundamental pan-

Eurasian cosmology upheld by all hunter-gatherer groups, visualising the

universe as divided into sky (air), earth (land) and underworld (water). On the

strength of this widely-supported claim, one wonders whether the dearth of

evidence for burial in Ireland might be explained as a result of a culture of

aquatic interment. There is Mesolithic evidence from Denmark – another

region the environment of which is dominated by watery places – of bodies

being placed in boats and sent across water, and similar ideas have been

suggested for the British Mesolithic (Cummings: 77).

Secondly, aquatic fauna are often invested with cosmological value: the Inuit

of Greenland revere whales and seals – both present on the Mesolithic Irish

shoreline – on an almost totemic level (Cummings: 77), and the Kets of

western Siberia think of water fowl as messengers of the underworld to

which watery places are gateways (Zvelebil 2003). We can expect similar

respect to have been offered to seals, for example, in Mesolithic Ireland:

apart from their personal attractiveness and their association with the

mystical sea, in the absence of red deer it would have been seal skins upon

which watercraft construction heavily relied. Boats, necessary for initial

crossings to Ireland, were certainly used for fishing and possibly also in

voyages of goods importation (Ellmers 1996; van Wijngaarden-Bakker 1989:

132; Woodman 1978: 166; 1987: 139-140; Woodman et al. 1999: 135, 137).

Thirdly, we see more of the variety of water’s cosmological importance in the

range of hunter-gatherer rituals in which it is involved. Ahlbäck (2003)

informs us that whirlpools in rivers serve as entrances to Siberian shamans’

rivers. At certain times of the year the functions of the Turu, the tree placed

in the centre of the shaman’s tent, are taken on by the spirit-inhabited islands

of ‘the clan’s mythical road, the river’. The Kets of Siberia conduct marriages

and rites of passage on the banks of the Yenisei, their main regional river

and ‘the clan’s mythical road’; and on the first killing of animals seen as

cosmologically important to the Kets, the liquid remains from cooking are

returned to the river at specific holy places in an act of symbolic regeneration

(Zvelebil 2003). The ‘Saltwater Peoples’ of tropical northern Australia rely

heavily on the sea for food, so it is not surprising that their territorial claims

and cosmological order are largely upheld by aquatic rituals. Via songs,

dances, offerings and subtle acts of communion with the numinous aquatic in

daily life, they honour Dreamtime ancestral beings, pacify sea spirits, and

thus renew tribal bounty (Niven 2003).

Of course, few archaeological remains of transient practices could be hoped

for from Mesolithic Ireland, so there is little direct proof that such aquatic

rituals took place during that period. However, once again given the shared

social and economic requirements of hunter-gatherers ancient and modern,

as well as the above-mentioned evidence for attribution of religious

importance to the aquatic in Mesolithic Ireland, the ethnographic record can

justifiably be seized upon as to some degree reflecting the reality of Irish

Mesolithic belief.

What we can envision of this latter then, with regard to the sacred aquatic, is

an understanding of watery places as gateways to another dimension within

the worldview of the period. This may have been the underworld or a place of

death – a common theme of hunter-gatherer belief and one deeply

embedded in many Eurasian religious traditions. The liminal quality of watery

places would have made them ideal locations for a variety of rituals, all

ultimately associated with the themes of life, death, and regeneration, and

the appeasement of the spiritual forces that dictated this natural cycle. The

choice to use aquatic sites would thus partly have been decided by the

environment and the necessary relationship Mesolithic people had with it, but

also largely by the social concerns of territoriality and the need for group

fusion through the periodic re-affirmation of identity at seasonal festivals,

which could conveniently and powerfully be carried out at rivers, lakes and

the sea.

THE MESOLITHIC: ONLY A LITTLE FEARFUL

In concluding, however, the role of the aquatic in the religious beliefs and

practices of the period must not be over-emphasised; through the ever-

moulding prism of contemporary society did the heavenly bodies, caves,

mountains, trees, animals, vegetation and other elements of their

surroundings also shape people’s sense of the numinous. Also, whilst

isolation of one of this important subject within Irish Mesolithic religion serves

to illustrate much about the fascinating spiritual mentality of the period, and

about its parent society, it is necessary to acknowledge that in fact we scrape

the tip of an iceberg. Irish Mesolithic religion is barely accessible to us, and

the most that we may reasonably infer from the remains and their

ethnographic parallels is yet but very little. Because the food resource base

was not suitable for independent development of great population growth,

sedentism, plant and animal domestication, because religion is by its nature

conservative, and because there seems to have been only a limited amount

of contact with overseas regions, we must suppose that there was little

change through time in the way water and watery places were

cosmologically viewed. The Irish Mesolithic culture was grounded in that of a

wider European and Eurasian tradition which then, in relative isolation, must

have reacted to the island’s lack of large land mammals and the strong

presence of the aquatic and the maritime. We have seen the effects of this

alteration in subsistence patterns and attendant social shifts, but not

significantly in terms of religious attitudes towards the aquatic. Thus, it

seems the cosmology engrained in European Mesolithic culture was flexible

enough to accommodate the more aquatic and maritime lifestyle forced upon

those first inhabitants of Ireland.

There is perhaps a simple explanation for this: fear nurtures faith. Whilst it

may have served a social and landscape enculturation purpose, it does not

automatically follow from the centrality of water in subsistence and travel that

it would have been the focus of religious activity: if water was plentiful and

bountiful, there would perhaps have been little incentive to maintain an

associated supplicative cult.1 As long as fresh water, fish and the animals

that, like humans, needed them were in ample supply – which seems to have

generally been the case – the stimulus for religious focus on the aquatic

environment may have been absent. Although new data might one day prove

otherwise, a conservative interpretation seems the most in keeping with the

evidence as matters stand: water and watery places had a definite place in

Irish Mesolithic religion, but due to a lack of heavy economic and thus social

pressure to change, the religious role of the aquatic was not – as might be

expected – significantly greater than in other regions of Europe. But change

lay in wait.

1 Ray (1978) also discusses this universal truth of religion.

CHAPTER THREE

THE NEOLITHIC

The constructed distinction between Mesolithic people as predominantly

concerned with the practical demands of life at the expense of the spiritual,

and the vision of primeval farmer societies as being orientated around daily

ritual and landscape monuments (Cummings 2003) is unfortunately

inaccurate, but the quantitatively and qualitatively richer data relevant to

social concerns and religious beliefs in the Neolithic (c.4500–2300 BC)

affords us some relatively detailed insights into the role of water and watery

places in the spirituality of the period. We are thus in a position to take a

more direct line towards our subject than that possible for the Mesolithic, but

first some general points on Neolithic religion must be made.

MESOLITHIC BRICKS AND NEOLITHIC NEEDS

The presently accepted understanding of the shift to farming in Europe

involves a gradual process in which hunter-gatherers play an active role,

slowly altering their own culture in tune with a new lifestyle and a new

population element (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 25-27; Dennell 1985; Price

1987; Whittle 1996; Zvelebil & Rowley-Conwy 1984, 1986). More so than the

sudden, farmer-dominated model of colonisation traditionally favoured by

Irish scholars, this concept of gradual acculturation has the support of the

presently available data. These demonstrate overseas contacts throughout

the Late Mesolithic, continuity in site organisation and specific subsistence

strategies, shared Neolithic-Mesolithic stone working traditions, and the

gradual nature of agriculture introduction (Anderson 1993: 23; Cooney 1989:

155; Cooney 2000: 27; Cooney & Grogan 1999: 27, 31; Edwards & Hirons

1984; Green and Zvelebil 1990: 83-84; Liversage 1968; Mitchell 1972; Monk

1993: 45; Peterson 1990: 97-98; Williams 1989; Woodman 1987: 142;

Woodman et al. 1997: 147). The changes brought about from the Neolithic

probably could not have been fully achieved without some population influx,

but whatever ideologies and worldviews the newcomers brought with them,

either from Britain or the Continent, may have been integrated with rather

than replacing those of the indigenous population: because the latter knew

the lie of the land in both physical and spiritual terms, any newcomers –

induced by their economic insecurity to take a conservative religious stance

– would have done well to appease the local numinous according to the local

manner which had worked thus far (Anon. 1999); and at the same time, the

religious structure supported by the farmers’ subsistence strategy would

require maintenance also. This bipartite heritage is reflected in the

archaeological record. For instance, Mesolithic remains at Newgrange, Brú

na Bóinne (Meath) could be accidental or the result of hunter-gatherer

activity – even religious – given the river’s practical value and the particular

landscape brought about by the river’s bend at Brú na Bóinne (Cooney 2000:

129). But these Mesolithic artefacts might have been incorporated by

Newgrange’s Neolithic builders, in a purposeful and pious reference back to

a by-then vanished way of life (perhaps inspired by territorial claims).

To summarise, the gradual favouring of agriculture and sedentism would in

time have altered the social and thus religious outlook of the Irish population

almost entirely. However, this was a gradual process and it must be

expected that inasmuch as people conceived of the spiritual nature of the

aquatic – conceptions which served as the bricks with which to build new

ritual structures according to new social needs – irremovable elements of

hunter-gatherer religion would have survived through the Neolithic and

beyond. With regard to the aquatic we will see this continuity of ideological

bricks in terms of a maintained connection between watery places and death,

and a maintained use of aquatic ritual and aquatic landscape enculturation

for territoriality purposes.

THE NUCLEUS OF NEOLITHIC RELIGION

The growth in the importance of funerary ritual through the Neolithic,

illustrated by tomb complexes such as Carrowmore, Linkardstown and Brú

na Bóinne, reflects an investment in the dead to such a degree that ancestor

cult is considered as central to religion during this period. Grave good

assemblages, over time including what were probably objects of specific

ritual use, also became richer through the Neolithic. Socially, this perhaps

reflects the rise of ranking and thus materialism, with status maintained by

displays of wealth. Due in part to this social hierarchisation, it seems the

Mesolithic climate of resource and territorial competitiveness was now

becoming harsher (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 73-74). Thus, long-standing

burial monuments and elaborate rituals may have also served to re-affirm

territorial claims via association with ancestors.

This ideology seems to have broadened from the Late Neolithic (c.2800–

2300 BC), with religion extending beyond its funerary focus through henge

and other open air enclosures. Like increases in metal and other prestige

goods, a developing regional tendency towards individual interment, and the

establishment of enclosed habitations within larger sites such as Lough Gur

(Limerick), these ritual architecture introductions can be viewed as results of

an emerging social élite with changing priorities (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 78,

82). The shift in religious ideology was in some cases less than subtle. At

Brú na Bóinne, new non-funerary open-air circles enclosed older tombs, with

the latter now all-but disused for burial and some, such as Newgrange,

showing signs of damage and alteration (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 79).

Because henges and the other new ceremonial sites were open to the skies,

they may have given those involved increased opportunity for public display

and thus to hold power over the rest of the population. At the same time,

group identity, morale and shared concerns with the agricultural cycle would

have been upheld through periodic communal rites (Shanks & Tilley 1982).

On a more conscious level, of course, these public emphases of ritual

represented actual beliefs. It is generally accepted that this ideological

structure was founded on ancestor worship and, increasingly, a cosmology

orientated around agricultural cycles. But much of this structure still remains

hidden from us. So around the spiritual nucleus of ritual monuments we will

base our aquatic discussion, which it is believed will shed further light on the

diversity of the enigmatic edifice that was Neolithic Irish religion. We will

circle around somewhat, exploring aquatic depositions and then non-

monumental petroglyphs, before returning to the tombs and the built ritual

centres.

‘PLOP’, BUT FOR MORE THAN MERE LUCK

The aforementioned, mostly Late Neolithic exotic and prestige items – such

as stone and copper axes, maceheads and ingots – are often found in

aquatic deposits (Figure 4) (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 72, 82-83). This pattern

will be discussed more thoroughly in the next chapter, for it only reached its

quantitative and qualitative zenith in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. But

statistics make clear that the ending up of objects in watery places was

clearly already quite common by the Late Neolithic. As most scholars now

agree, it was a trend evidently not arrived at by accident; there is far too

much consistency in the kinds of objects and specific places involved.

Moreover, the symbolic value of these particular objects is indicated by their

previously more predominant use as grave goods, and the subsequent

prehistoric tendency to deposit increasingly valuable and symbolically-

soaked objects in the same aquatic places in which Neolithic goods are

found. What we are seeing here, thus, is an early horizon in the fascinating

phenomenon of aquatic deposition that survived right into medieval times.

Indeed, its echoes are still perhaps heard with every ‘plop’ of a coin into a

fountain. This modern practice is almost completely – except in our moments

of real need! – bereft of religious meaning, but the prehistoric placement of

objects of social value in watery places, conceivably begun in the Mesolithic,

was undoubtedly stimulated by certain beliefs. Shifting to suit the social

message accompanying them, but never I suspect fundamentally changing

themselves, the details of these beliefs will become more apparent as our

voyage progresses.

As against dry depositions in the landscape, the statistics for aquatic

depositions might have been skewed by unequal chances for recovery, given

mitigating factors such as the many river draining and dredging projects that

have taken place over the last century and a half (Bradley 1990: 31). Watery

locations also present a barrier to unintended and sought discovery alike that

is not present on land. Finally, accidental loss, fording point battles, flooding

and erosion were undoubtedly the causes of certain aquatic concentrations

of objects. However, the sheer numbers involved and occasionally the nature

of find contexts have required scholars to acknowledge that many aquatic

and terrestrial finds reflect deliberate deposition rather than loss, and

furthermore that objects were more commonly placed in water than in dry

pits (Bradley 1990: 24). These objects are increasingly viewed as remnants

of rituals focused on aquatic sites and other liminal places in the landscape.

Neolithic Stone Axehead Find

Contexts

Other

18%

Site

10.8%

Land

14.9%Bog

11.8%

River

44.5%

1

2

3

4

5

Neolithic Macehead Find Contexts

Lake

40%

Bog

30%

Land

10%

Tomb

20% 1

2

3

4

Neolithic Copper Axehead Find

Contexts

River

4%Lake

2%

Bog

40%Other

54%

1

2

3

4

Figure 4: Neolithic axehead and macehead recovery contexts (after Cooney 2000: 208, Cooney & Mandal 1998: 34 and Simpson 1989, 1990).

The Neolithic object type most commonly deposited in water were axeheads,

some forty-five percent of the full total from the Irish archaeological record

coming from river beds, and many from river fording points particularly; bogs,

lakes and the sea received their fair share also. The predominant aquatic

context of Irish Neolithic axeheads, continued through later prehistory

(Eogan 1983), is also mirrored by other regions of Neolithic northwest

Europe (Adkins & Jackson 1978; Ebbesen 1993). The particular significance

of axeheads from rivers has in some cases been viewed as largely

functional: in Britain, concentrations in the Thames at points of high fish

density provoked suggestions that these axeheads represent Neolithic timber

working activity connected with fishing (Cooney & Mandal 1998: 34). While

this may be plausible, once again, in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe

generally statistics indicate deliberate deposition to be the only realistic

mechanism by which so many axeheads could find their way to watery

places (Sheridan et al. 1992). That these are the remains of ritual is

suggested by contextual details where these survive: two axes lay together

in Muckanagh bog (Westmeath) possibly indicating some repetition of

practice and surely negating against an accidental loss interpretation.

Occasionally high-status pieces were deposited: a 36-cm axehead2 was

found in a modern bog near Carn (Monaghan) (Cooney 2000: 208); and a

decorated battle axe was found in a river at Kilrea (Derry) (Simpson 1990: 6).

The impression from the aquatic deposition record, that axes had

considerable social and symbolic value, is supported by these objects’ wider

Neolithic treatment. Their transport over great distances across Europe is

one overt statement of this attachment of value (Bradley & Edmonds 1993).

In Ireland, such is also indicated by axe grave goods and certain terrestrial

finds. Of those copper axeheads recovered from Neolithic funerary contexts,

the masterfully-decorated examples that come mostly from passage graves

are especially viewed as status symbols or ritual objects (Figure 5). The

2 Any stone axehead over 16 cm in length is so unusual as to be treated as serving an

important ritual function (Cooney 2000: 208).

tendency for the smallest axes to come to light on settlement sites such as

Lough Gur, as well as the frequent lack of wear in these diminutive pieces,

has drawn Cooney, Mandal and others to postulate an amulet or toy function

(Cooney & Mandal 1998: 53-54). This must be weighed against the

possibility of reworking or simple functionalism, but ethnographic evidence

and similar prehistoric remains from other European regions support the view

that at least the largest axes had prestige and ceremonial roles (Cooney &

Mandal 1998: 53-54). The conspicuous deposition of these non-utilitarian

pieces in water, pits and graves would therefore have served both as a

statement of status and, more consciously, as an overtly religious act. On the

other hand, the involvement of completely typical axeheads in these aquatic

and other rituals speaks of the egalitarian, communal aspects of what were

still small-scale societies. Thus common pottery is often found with these

axes, as at Lisalea bog (Monaghan) and Bracklin bog (Westmeath) (Cooney

2000: 130).

In such modest aquatic offerings we might recognise some vague continuity

with Mesolithic ritual practice, albeit through the lens of an altered ideology.

The same continuity might lie behind rare recoveries like the Neolithic body

placed in open water at Stoneyisland Bog (Galway), or the coastal wetland

human skull fragment from Carrigdirty (Kerry) (Figure 5) (Brindley & Lanting

1995; Cooney 2000: 130; O’Sullivan 2001: 80).

But what beliefs inspired this variety of aquatic depositions? To answer this

question, via consideration of diachronic patterns, is one of the central aims

of this paper. As with the Mesolithic, we can at this point draw attention to the

associations with funerary symbolism and death especially. One

manifestation of this seems to be the above-mentioned human remains.

Leading from potential hunter-gatherer origins and a background of

Mesolithic cosmological links between watery places and a death-related

otherworld, these burials and token interments in Neolithic waters

undoubtedly reflect at least part of the perceived nature of the numinous

aquatic. We will see this perception again and again externalised through

prehistory and beyond. Another expression of the link between aquatic

deposition rituals and death are the axes and other offerings themselves. In

earlier Neolithic times such objects were much more commonly placed in

graves. It has been suggested that the gradual extension of their

depositional use to watery and dry sites in the landscape was the religious

result of worries over an increasingly damp climate (Cooney 1999: 48).

There is indeed a rough contemporaneity between both aquatic and

terrestrial depositions on the one hand and climatic deterioration in Ireland

on the other. But the choice to use objects most commonly deposited in

graves as the predominant (mostly aquatic) offering type may indicate a

desired extension of funerary symbolism into the realm of water cult. This

complements the Neolithic human remains from watery contexts, and once

again would see strong continuity through subsequent millennia.

As metals rose in economic and social importance from the Neolithic, these

rituals increasingly served the function of reaffirming individuals’ status via

the conspicuous deposition of prestige goods (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 84).

That rivers, lakes, bogs and the sea – like caves and other atmospheric

landscape features – were often chosen for this is undoubtedly a result of

these places’ intrinsic liminal and mystical qualities, but more practically the

fact that the nature of their resting places would afford any offerings some

protection from looters (O’Flaherty 1995). Now, I noted this same

phenomenon of dropping objects in aquatic places for the Mesolithic too, but

followed modern convention and attributed to it a landscape enculturation

and territoriality role. This might seem contradictory but it must be

remembered that, despite some undoubted continuity in conscious belief,

assertion of rank was only with the shift to farming to become a primary

concern of Irish society. As opposed to the hunter-gatherer social form, the

Figure 5 (clockwise from top left): Neolithic stone object deposition from Moynagh Lough (Meath); A human skull fragment from Carrigdirty (Limerick); A deliberately ambiguous reconstruction of how it might have gotten there (note the skull on the ground in front of the fire); And the famous stone macehead from the passage grave at Knowth, Brú na Bóinne (Meath) (from O’Sullivan 1998: 61, O’Sullivan 2001: 76, O’Sullivan 2001: 86 and askaboutireland.ie respectively).

evidence for religion from the Neolithic onward is therefore most correctly

viewed as inspired by the needs of an increasingly hierarchised society. This

would hold as true for ritual deposits in water as for other elements of the

religious edifice. Concurrently, territorial claims remained an important

function of religious behaviour and, like ceremonies carried out at tomb

monuments, internal group stability would have been reinforced by aquatic

deposition of objects according to a shared set of ritual rules, a shared

cosmological framework, and common consent to the religious and otherwise

leadership of certain individuals.

PETROGLYPHS AND THE AQUATIC

We turn now to rock art, another prehistoric phenomenon which undoubtedly

served a sociological and political function but, in order to assure its

perpetuation also involved belief and ideology, and thus must be counted at

least in part as of a religious nature. Rock art surely provides the most fertile

– and thus hazardous – ground for speculation of all prehistoric remains.

Because of its proposed conceptual connections with the aquatic, we begin

to negotiate that same terrain here, although the petroglyphic forms that

began to be used in Neolithic Ireland and the rest of Atlantic Europe were

maintained until perhaps as late as the Middle Bronze Age (Bradley 1997:

57-65).

Recently, petroglyphic studies have sought insight into the subject primarily

by looking at rock art locations within the landscape. Bradley (1997: 81-88)

has shown that some western Scottish and northern English rock carving

positions were chosen in order to command views over either the immediate

vicinity or more distant areas. Relating his view-shed analysis data to local

topography and site intervisibility, he proposes that the carving positions

were associated with routes across the landscape. He also follows Johnston

(1991) in seeing a connection between carvings and fertile land but, because

many of the most fertile areas do not have rock art, Bradley does not see this

connection as direct (Bradley 1997: 91-92). Rather, he notes that most

carvings are positioned at the edges of fertile areas, where there may have

been territorial disputes or population pressure; he points out that the

complexity of rock art compositions increases with the degree of fertile land

restriction. This bipartite explanatory model of Atlantic rock art, as associated

both with routes across the landscape and with territorial dispute, has many

points in its favour: most importantly, it accommodates the great range of

location type choices for Atlantic petroglyphs in a way that particularistic

motif interpretations do not; it also realistically fits into the general

understanding of Neolithic and Early-Middle Bronze Age life as still quite

mobile; and it satisfies the well-supported view of certain conceptual and

ideological links between the regions of Atlantic Europe from the Neolithic,

brought about by maritime connections and trade in objects such as stone

and flint axes (Cooney & Mandal 1998: 111-146; Darvill 1989). Whilst

undoubtedly the cognitive reality of petroglyphs was more complex, at the

moment Bradley’s model provides us with the most acceptable structure in

which to frame our interpretations.

If rock art was associated with pathways and places across the landscape,

then aquatic points played no small role both in deciding the locations of

carvings and perhaps also in the rituals (if any) that took place thereat.

Examples abound of Atlantic rock art concentrations at watery places.

Indeed, Johnston (1991) has noted that although one never has far to go to

come across water in Ireland, the rock art of the island shows a marked

tendency for proximity to aquatic places (Figure 6): no petroglyphs are over a

kilometre away from water, and eighty-eight percent are nearer than fifty

metres. The vast majority of the sites included in Johnston’s study were

located by rivers or lakes, and the remaining few lay in proximity to the sea

(Johnston 1991: 90). Whilst the Derrynablaha group (Kerry) as a whole

overlooks the only Iveragh Mountains crossing-point, one composition is

orientated on a lake, and various carvings are also set around river sources,

giving rise to suggestions of a water cult (Figure 6) (Bradley 1993: 91;

O’Sullivan & Sheehan 1993: 83). Those compositions set by lakes are

amongst the most complex of the Iveragh region (Purcell 1994). Similar

aquatic emphasis is found elsewhere in Ireland, as at Mevagh (Donegal)

where a composition overlooks an estuary linking the Atlantic and certain

lakes, and at Doagh Island thirty kilometres away, where the shoreline is

decorated as it faces the mainland across the channel (Figure 6) (Bradley

1993: 94). Both examples follow the general pattern of marking routeways, in

these cases maritime passages. Aquatic associations of various kinds can

also be found in the rock art of Britain, France, Spain and Portugal (Bradley

1997: 100-102; 162-176).

We might begin to understand the beliefs which inspired Neolithic and Early-

Middle Bronze Age rock artists, and also to establish the petroglyphs’ aquatic

associations as more than coincidental or convenient, by looking at the

relationship between rock art and other ritual activities. Firstly, although no

Irish evidence yet concurs, it is clear from overseas remains – including the

many polished stone axes recovered from the River Dee estuary in Scotland

on which the Galloway carvings are set (Bradley 1997: 98), and the

concentrations of cup-marked rocks on the Loire-Atlantique in France at the

same points as Early Bronze Age river finds (Bradley 1997: 162) – that there

existed a connection between rock art and aquatic deposition. Secondly,

petroglyphs were not isolated landscape features. In Ireland, as elsewhere,

they are mostly situated near settlements (Johnston 1991: 93-94). Carvings

were often placed by what were probably the paths to monuments, their

ornateness increasing with proximity to the built ritual centres as well as

towards the territorial periphery (Bradley 1993: 94). Some Strath Tay

carvings in Scotland can confidently be associated with stone circles and

megalithic tombs (Bradley 1997:101-102). Different motifs were used at

different locations within each region, at places of varying accessibility and

presumably with changing meanings and uses. This may suggest a degree

of centralisation and exclusivity usually associated with the built ritual centres

of the Neolithic onwards (Bradley 1997: 95); I believe it reasonable to

suggest that the same élite sections of society, and thus the same guiding

ideological hand, probably controlled activities at both site types. This

connection between rock art and megalithic structures has particular

resonance in Ireland, where passage grave and non-monumental

petroglyphic motifs exhibit some marked similarities (Figure 7) (Bradley

1997: 66; Johnston 1991). Relevant to this is the fact that the Dundalk area

of carvings (Louth), positioned on the Boyne estuary, was a source of stone

for Newgrange and the other Brú na Bóinne monuments. Thus, although the

particulars of belief that lay behind rock art might remain obscure, it seems

Figure 6 (clockwise from top left): The distribution of Atlantic rock art in Ireland; The view along the lake and out to sea from the Mevagh petroglyphs (Donegal); The view across the channel to the mainland from the Doagh carvings (Donegal); And the Derrynablaha composition (Kerry), with the background falling away to the aligned lake (from Johnston 1993: 259, Bradley 1997: Plate 25, Bradley 1997: Plate 26, and O’Sullivan & Sheehan 1993: 79 respectively).

likely that the scenes witnessed at many such sites were bound up with

maritime and aquatic activities and concepts, as indicated also by the

evidence for shared locations considered appropriate for petroglyphs and

aquatic deposition. We may assume that both traditions were moulded by the

political and social hierarchy of the times, who in zones of population

pressure maintained their territorial claims and internal stability by such

religious means.3

Figure 7: Some motifs common to Irish passage graves and landscape rock carvings (from Johnston 1993: 266).

‘LAND: WATER’

Concluding our treatment of the period, we return to the nucleus of Neolithic

Irish conceptions of the transcendent, the tombs and other built ritual

monuments. At the greatest of these nuclei, Brú na Bóinne, ponds were

constructed – a bold link between tombs, henges and water (Figure 8)

(Cooney 2000: 166). To propose another Scottish parallel, Richards (1996,

from Cooney 2000: 167) argues that Orkney henge ditches were made to

accommodate the filling of these monuments with water, in order to create ‘in

microcosm the land: water relationship of the wider landscape’. If we take

this conceptual possibility seriously, as the Brú na Bóinne ponds compel us

to, it is worth keeping in mind Ireland’s relatively intense interaction with

3 Similar views have been voiced by Lodoen (2003: 518) and others with regard to

Mesolithic-Neolithic maritime petroglyphs at Vingen, Norway.

Scotland and northern England during the Neolithic. Amongst the

expressions of this link relevant to the present discussion is the use of quartz

and crystal quartz, the same stones chosen for the Newgrange façade, in

megalithic structures by the Strath Tay and Croft Moraig rock art groupings

(Bradley 1997: 104). Also, there existed the shared practice of aquatic

deposition of axes, the similarities between Ireland and Britain in petroglyphic

motif orientation (Bradley 1997: 92), and the stylistic connections between

the carving forms of Roughting Linn, England and the megalithic art of

Ireland and Orkney, not to mention the clear similarities in megalithic

architecture and material culture (Bradley 1997: 105-107; Cooney & Mandal

1998: 111-146). There are instances in later Irish prehistoric and early

historic times of pools being constructed for ritual purposes, but unlike these

the Neolithic remains reveal no evidence of ritual offerings. Thus it seems

that the religious role of the Brú na Bóinne artificial pools was largely

symbolic, the grandest statement of water’s cosmological importance as

rendered in other forms, under different aspects of religious ideology and for

different sociological purposes at sites of aquatic deposition, rock art and

other rituals beyond the spiritual landscape nucleus.

As well as this, certain Neolithic tombs in Ireland may have been

incorporated into religious seascapes as in the Orkneys, Sweden and

Brittany during the same period (Phillips 2003). There are no clear examples

in Ireland of Neolithic monuments and tombs being located to maximise sea

visibility, but the visual connections between the Brú na Bóinne passage

tombs and the adjacent river – so important for the region’s prosperity and

overseas contacts – provide an inland example of this required broadening in

the way we think of Neolithic landscapes. Like the intentional placement of

rock art along maritime routes in Donegal, we may well find that tombs were

sited to be visible to those people travelling by water. This would be

especially expected in areas such as Lambay (Dublin) and Rathlin (Antrim)

islands, the stone of which was transported around Britain and Ireland. Apart

from the importation of animals, the growing importance of maritime transport

in Ireland through the Neolithic is also revealed by the presence on Irish sites

of axes made from Arran, Welsh and Cumbria stones. This is supported by

watercraft remains in maritime contexts, such as those from Antrim, Down,

Meath and Wexford (Breen & Forsythe 2004: 31-34).

Figure 8: The Late Neolithic ritual landscape of Brú na Bóinne (Meath), with artificial ponds marked (from Cooney 2000: 166).

THE NEOLITHIC: ANCESTORS AND WET FEET

The evidence for the role of the watery places generally in Irish Neolithic

religion indicates an ever-increasing comfort with and willingness to interact

with, mark and alter the landscape. This complements the popular view of

spirituality during the period being centred around tombs and ancestor

worship. Through remains of these ritual impingements on the environment –

terrestrial and aquatic – are we given a fuller vision of the complexity of

Neolithic belief, which clearly involved intense spiritual interaction with one‘s

surroundings. In the realm of aquatic deposition rituals I have sought to

emphasise the particular links with beliefs also appropriate to funerary

settings. From a social perspective, it has been maintained that interaction

with the numinous aquatic in general followed from its Mesolithic antecedent

in having a great deal to do with territoriality concerns. As we shall now see,

these ideological and social attributes of water cult were only to be

elaborated upon.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE BRONZE AGE There is nothing to suggest any cultural discontinuity from the Neolithic into

the Irish Bronze Age (c.2300–600 BC). As society wended its way towards

what by the end of the latter period is popularly envisioned as a martial

aristocracy of proto-Celtic form, metal of course was evermore present in

material culture, and religious energy was increasingly given over to activities

which were at least not overtly or physically associated with the dead.

Stimulated by the gradual acceptance of farming as the economic fulcrum

and central subsistence strategy, these developments were naturally

interdependent in granting and denying each other momentum, and formed a

seamless social whole only in modern eyes subdivided. The aquatic did not

dominate the spiritual aspect of this paradigm, but it did play an important

role the analysis of which reveals much about the beliefs and social mores of

the period. Our evidence for water-related cult and spiritscapes now almost

exclusively takes the form of objects left in watery places.

CHANGE, NO CHANGE

Much growth, diversity and change took place in the ritual practice of aquatic

deposition in Ireland, as elsewhere in Europe, through the Bronze Age.

These changes are as revealing as the degree of continuity in this tradition of

surprising longevity. Thus the Early Bronze Age (EBA: 2300–1700 BC) saw

little quantitative growth from the Neolithic, with still just over half of bronze

and copper axeheads following their stone predecessors in coming from

aquatic locations (Figure 9) (Dickins 1996: 162). Again, exceptionally

preserved discoveries indicate many of these objects arrived in their aquatic

contexts through deliberate deposition rather than loss. Notable examples

include that at Hillswood (Galway) where seven halberds were bunched and

thrust downward into a bog, or at Derryniggin (Leitrim), where two, probably

deliberately broken axes were placed together under a bog along with two

flint knives (O’Flaherty 1995: 36). The exclusivity and distribution patterns of

aquatic finds support this deliberate deposition view. Moreover, assemblages

such as the circle of eleven axes enclosing a heap of wood ashes and deer

bones which was protected by an overlying stone slab on the bank of the

Carhan River (Kerry) (O’Brien 1993: 85), strongly suggest that many EBA

aquatic depositions were of a ritual nature. There is also no interruption from

the Late Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age in the sequence of aquatic

deposition at Lough Gur and elsewhere (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 103),

speaking of considerable continuity in ritual and belief.

EBA Dry Group Depositions

Axe

82%

Blade

5%

Other

13%

1

2

3

EBA Wet Group Depositions

Axe

68%

Blade

23%

Other

9%

1

2

3

EBA Metal Object Group Depositions

Bog

37%

River

3%

Stone

33%

Clay

9%

Sand

12%

Lake

3%

Tomb

3%

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

EBA Dry / Wet Group Depositions

Wet

39%

Dry

61%

1

2

Figure 9: Typological and locational patterns in EBA deliberate object group deposition, relying on those objects for which discovery details are known. (Looking at the top pair first): Axes tended more to dry locations, unlike daggers and blades. Rivers were not yet to receive many objects; rather, bogs were the principal metalwork deposition sites. Metal objects recovered from tombs are notable by their rarity, but this reflects only object groups (‘hoards’) found. As we shall see, a considerable proportion of single finds have come from tombs. Unfortunately, discovery details for single non-burial finds are too rare to permit a representative chart. In terms of total object group numbers, but not in quality of items, dry landscape locations are favoured (after Cooney & Grogan 1999 and O’Flaherty 1995).

The EBA differs from the Neolithic and subsequent periods in that its

deposited axes were not hafted, and in its final centuries the majority of

these axes were also decorated in a manner strongly suggestive of non-

utilitarian purpose for at least their last functional stage prior to being offered

(O’Flaherty 1995: 15). Dickins (1996: 163), however, over-stresses the

distinctiveness of EBA aquatic axehead deposition from other periods.

Although hafted and lacking decoration, Neolithic stone axeheads were

surely considered offerings of value: unlike bronze, a high degree of polish

rather than decoration seems to have been the principal denotation of

aesthetic value in stone axeheads. Also, we have seen that various Neolithic

axe offerings were of a size suggesting ceremonial rather than functional

use. The social status value of stone tools generally is indicated by the fact

that less effort went into making them after the introduction of the more rare

and thus prestige material, metal (although the functional superiority of metal

over stone undoubtedly played a role here also) (Cooney & Grogan 1999:

231). Rather than a temporally unique practice, then, EBA aquatic

depositions formed but one stage in a long-maintained ritual continuum.

Some EBA deposition trends are revealing of the direction this continuum

now took with metal firmly on the scene. Axes remained the preferred objects

for deposition in both wet and dry places, making up the great majority of

‘hoards’ and single finds (Figure 9). They are more often than not found only

with other axes. Significant also is the EBA exclusion from burial contexts of

axes and halberds, their place being rapidly taken by daggers and later

razors too. Goldwork was also depositionally confined to the non-funerary

landscape (O’Flaherty 1995: 25). This growing strictness of division between

objects appropriate to burial and non-burial deposition hints greatly at the

ideological meaning of those EBA objects left in wet places. The differences

between aquatic and dry environmental depositions are undoubtedly also

significant (Figure 9). They have been linked with the fact that wet finds

became more popular through the EBA – and far beyond, as we shall see –

and put forward in support of aforementioned suggestions that aquatic cults

across Europe were connected with worries over an increasingly damp

climate, dangerous and detrimental to farming (Baillie 1993; O’Flaherty 1995:

24).

However, the larger social context of EBA aquatic depositions invites a more

complex interpretation of this ritual activity. Aquatic depositions were

cognitively linked to their terrestrial counterparts, as is shown by the shared

depositional use of axes and other objects almost only in these two contexts.

Terrestrial depositions reflect a deliberate association with stones; fortunate

preservations such as that of an axe and two copper cakes buried against

the side of a standing stone at Toormore (Cork) suggest a ritual function for

many EBA dryland object depositions as well as wet (Dickins 1996: 163;

O’Flaherty 1995: 36). As part of a larger deposition group focusing on both

aquatic and terrestrial liminal points in the landscape, then, changes in wet

offering patterns were at least as closely related to socio-cultural

developments as to climatic changes. Most significantly, it has been shown

that there was also a close locational correspondence between EBA object

deposition and that of single burials. This link between object deposition and

funerary practices and concepts is suggested by the intentional and strict

division of particular objects between each context type. It has also been

remarked that many dry depositions have a cist-like appearance resembling

EBA graves.

We are here witnessing a vital stage in the development of aquatic ritual and

belief. Clearly, these were inspired by the liminality of certain places, which

continued to impress the EBA population. Given the variety of site types

chosen for deposition – bogs, rivers, lakes, the sea and other aquatic sites,

as well as stones, tombs and such defined dry places – it is not surprising to

read suggestions that prominent landscape features of either aquatic or

terrestrial nature might be the focus of offerings by virtue of these general

liminal qualities, and that the proportionately ever-greater attention given to

aquatic sites may have been due to people’s perception that the increased

wetness of the Irish climate from the Neolithic required the more energetic

supplication of responsible transcendental powers (Cooney 1999: 49; Dickins

1996: 163). But the continued locational and artefactual links between

depositions and funerary concepts cannot be ignored.

Regional developments in EBA aquatic and non-aquatic deposition were

undoubtedly in some way also the result of combining the ancient symbolic

importance of axes (Bradley 1990: 91) with the more recent attachment of

political value to metals brought about by a society which was slowly altering

itself through the rise of social ranking and individualism. O’Flaherty (1995:

17-19) has shown that there took place a south-north migration of object

deposition practice through the EBA. As well as linked to single burials, this

movement can be closely associated with the spread of metal production

centres from the southwest of the island. Thus, what we may be witnessing

here is the continuation of a scenario wherein those with access to metal

may have wished to publicise their wealth by the conspicuous disposal of

objects in this prestige material. In what might have been somewhat socially

restless times, EBA ritual employment of weaponry could increasingly have

served to send the right sort of message of personal standing, identity and

land ownership, as an appendage of the death, regeneration and otherworld

beliefs in which aquatic cults were long-founded. However, we must not

exaggerate this uneasy picture. The strong cultural continuity from the

Neolithic, as well as the fact that the amounts of aquatic offerings did not

considerably increase with the EBA, must be emphasised. We will therefore

leave discussion of conspicuous disposal until the next stage in Irish Bronze

Age development, when this function of religion seems to have been more

intensely demanded by society.

MIDDLE BRONZE AGE DEVELOPMENTS

The Middle Bronze Age (MBA: 1700–1200 BC) saw bronze object deposition

in aquatic contexts gradually increase, especially in rivers and lakes (Figure

10) (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 138-140). Looking at the data, we see that the

post-cinerary urn stage of the MBA (from c.1450 BC) saw a definitive shift in

social orientation away from burials richly adorned in prestige goods. The

appropriate final resting places for these tools of élite status assertion,

including all metal objects except razors, were now generally considered to

be aquatic sites. Given the evidence for comminution of remains and grave

offerings, as well as the construction of barrows and ring ditches, it may be

that funerary effort simply altered its expression rather than being reduced

(Barrett 1990: 186; Cooney & Grogan 1999: 135-137). A movement toward

more symbolic burial might explain the Irish switch from weapons as grave

goods to their deposition in rivers, now in the MBA more clearly defined, as it

would similar burial-to-aquatic tendencies of certain Neolithic and Bronze

Age prestige items in Britain and elsewhere over time (Barrett & Needham

1988: 133).

Early and Middle Bronze Age Dagger

Find Contexts

River

25%

Bog

25%

Grave

35%

Land

15% 1

2

3

4

Middle Bronze Age Dirks & Rapier

Find Contexts

River

65%

Lake

9%

Bog

22%

Other

4% 1

2

3

4

Figure 10: The importance of these graphs is in demonstrating the post-cinerary urn MBA deposition pattern change for weaponry (after Cooney & Grogan 1999). EBA-MBA daggers are more often found with burials than in rivers or bogs, but almost half the known dirks and rapiers which apparently replaced daggers in the MBA are from aquatic sites, especially rivers, but without a single complementary burial find (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 138-140). As with some Neolithic and EBA axes, many of these weapons were not actually made to withstand the rigours of battle, which suggests a purely ceremonial function (Ramsey 1995: 60).

But we still lack a why for this decisive post-cinerary urn MBA shift towards

aquatic-focused, symbolic burial rituals. Without any sign of a significant new

population element, this change marks a serious – although not immediate –

break with a burial tradition of at least Neolithic origin. The Atlantic rock art in

Ireland also seems to fall out of use at this time. Beneath these important

developments, metal and other prestige goods were now increasingly

accessible, mobile and thus capable of altering one’s position through war or

wealth.4 An alternative to viewing post-cinerary urn MBA aquatic depositions

as of a funerary nature, then, would be that like other ritual changes of the

time they reflected a steady social rejection of certain aspects of the religious

edifice, particularly that of ancestor worship, in favour of the non-human

numinous long believed to be accessible at aquatic sites. But I find such a

fundamental break with tradition hard to imagine, and tend rather to think that

the long-respected links between the aquatic and the funerary were too

engrained to discard. What the post-cinerary urn changes might reflect, then,

is not an abandonment of belief but rather an internal ideological shift of ritual

divisions between water cult and burials.

The stimulus for this MBA ritual change was undoubtedly social. It is a near-

universal trait of Bronze Age and all non-industrial cultures that élite alliances

are formed through gift exchange (Bradley 1990: 39; Earle 2002; Mauss

1954). This involves a process that can potentially escalate into greater and

greater quantities of debt and discharge – what Gregory (1980: 634) calls

‘alternating disequilibrium‘ – whereby nobody can get too far above their

peers in wealth because they receive much of each other’s surplus. Thus the

status quo is maintained. The advantage of redirecting one’s gifts towards

the dead – or in the Irish case as burial-related aquatic votives – is that, by

offering them and thus removing some surplus wealth from the grasp of

competitors, the penitent man effectively halves his losses while still

displaying wealth and thus asserting social rank (Gregory 1980). This would

explain the increasing quantities and high-status nature of aquatic offerings

from the post-cinerary urn stage of the MBA. There may have been a

particular connection between the warrior lifestyle and this cult, expressed by

the common offering of weaponry. But, again, we cannot ignore the

ideological link between aquatic depositions and burials, now even more

4 Connections between metal and politicised religion might well be indicated by the MBA

increase in the number of stone circle monuments at Mount Gabriel (Cork), centre of southwest Munster metal production, as compared to neighbouring regions (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 121; O‘Brien 1990).

emphasised by the firm division in the depositional use of particular objects.

On this foundation of belief there developed ideological connections between

water cult and warriors, a requirement of increasing social pressures.

THE KITCHEN SINK

From the final centuries of the Bronze Age in Ireland (LBA: 1200–600 BC)

we are bequeathed a flourishing array of aquatic deposition remains (Figure

11), which provide further provocative evidence for aquatic ritual activity and

its underlying beliefs. Of course, as in all periods certain environmental finds

would have been utilitarian. Thus, the LBA rise of ‘hoards’ might have been

due to a climate of insecurity, if hoards they were. This reading would

certainly explain the association of these buried object groups with important

settlement sites, such as the Tara Rath na Ríogh enclosure (Meath), Emain

Macha (Armagh), and Mooghaun North (Kildare) (Cooney & Grogan 1999:

156-158). In support of the hoard interpretation for this group is the fact that

many of these settlements now saw the development of fortifications. But

change within the LBA is here evident also. The hoard reading fits well with

many earlier, Bishopsland phase deposits, the majority being made up

largely of jewellery – it would be unwise to cast away one’s weapons when

under threat – but the ‘hoards’ of the final LBA centuries, the Dowris phase,

are more mixed in object type. Whilst dryland and therefore more accessible

groups containing tools may well have been hoards proper, the bronze horns

that nearly all survive as exclusive group deposits from bogs more probably

had a ceremonial function suited to their liminal aquatic surroundings (Figure

11) (Bradley 1990: 29); the choice to leave these objects in bogs certainly

makes intent to retrieve seem unlikely.

One notable Dowris introduction to the aquatic deposit record is that of metal

cauldrons, discussed more fully in the next chapter. Eogan (1993: 131) sees

these enigmatic objects as having been a central feature of society, perhaps

‘memorial deposits for a deceased person or a tribal tabernacle or shrine’

(my emphasis). As with horns and buckets, Cooney and Grogan (1999: 162)

also classify cauldrons as ceremonial. They occur in Scandinavian Bronze

Age ritual contexts, again often aquatic (Bradley 1990: 29). These additions

to the paraphernalia of aquatic ritual may merely have been part of the

international and mobile élite language of status, developed in or introduced

to Ireland at this time when a more clearly defined martial aristocracy was

taking shape. On the other hand, they correspond well with the introduction

of swords and other new materials to support the association of the Dowris

phase with the rising influence of proto-Celtic groups in Ireland (see Ramsey

1995: 160). The latter view seems more reasonable, given the clear religious

and cultural connections between the Dowris LBA and the Iron Age, by which

time Celtic culture – however vague and loosely defined this label may be

(Green 1997; Cunliffe 1979) – firmly dominated the upper echelons of insular

society. Celtic beliefs associated with the aquatic, discussed in the next

chapter, would thus be relevant to the latter stages of the Irish Bronze Age.

Figure 11 (from left to right): LBA finds from a bog at Dowris (Offaly), including a ceremonial horn, a cauldron, weaponry and various ornamental objects; goldwork from a bog at Harmondstown (Kildare), somewhat incongruously associated with plant life rather than its aquatic find context (both from shee-eire.ie).

The river and lake placement pattern of weapons, on the other hand, speaks

of great continuity in LBA ritual and belief from earlier periods (Figure12).

Through the middle of the LBA rapiers and dirks were replaced with the

sword, but the tradition of weapon deposition in rivers was maintained. This

contextual tendency, when contrasted with that of hoards for bogs and to a

lesser extent dry land for gold ornaments (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 229), and

keeping in mind the fact that no Bishopsland and only thirty-four (twenty-six

percent) of Dowris hoards had weapons, indicates that the LBA followed the

post-cinerary urn MBA practice of almost restricting weapon deposition to

single offerings in rivers and lakes. Sword concentrations, probably due to a

number of individual depositions over time, furthermore occur at particular

long-ritualised lakes such as Lough Erne, and river places such as Keelogue

on the Shannon, Toome on the Bann and Portora on the Erne. That these

latter are all on or at fording places has been cited in accidental loss

arguments. But the restricted range of object types involved indicates

intentional deposition to which, given its long history and symbolic

connection with burials, we can confidently assign a religious ritual function.

LBA Sword Find Contexts

River

38%

Lake

8%

Bog

29%

Other

25% 1

2

3

4

LBA Basal-Looped Spearhead Find

Contexts

River

65%Lake

5%

Bog

25%

Other

5% 1

2

3

4

Figure 12: Weaponry clearly maintained its depositional appropriateness to the aquatic during the LBA, now joined by a range of other high-status and ceremonial objects as well as common material (after Cooney & Grogan 1999 and Eogan 1983).

The popular, mythology-based image of Late Bronze Age and Iron Age

Ireland depicts a male-dominated martial aristocracy, and to some extent this

is supported by archaeology. But we must be careful here. It is an image

which clouds the fullness of LBA reality. So, continuing from earlier

arguments, it is important to make clear that water cult was not all about

warriors. The use of weaponry – now by the LBA clearly the dominant

offering type in rivers and lakes – should not be simplistically connected

outright with martial ideology. Hodder (1982) has made the useful point that

the symbolic function of objects often extends beyond the connotative realm

of their material function. Such symbolic flexibility fits well with the variety of

objects chosen for a watery end across Ireland and Europe, especially from

this time. Weapons may have been the preferred offerings largely because of

their material and thus prestige value, with the martial message important but

not amounting to the sum total of social information conveyed. More than

personal status claims or territorial worries, on a conscious level death and

rebirth themes must have dominated these rituals. This will be discussed

further in the next chapter, in the context of a closely related Iron Age culture.

That coastal waters were also considered worthy of offerings is perhaps

attested to by finds such as the LBA gold bracelets, dress fastener, other

metalwork and possible ritual objects from the north Munster inter-tidal zone

(O’Sullivan 2001). Water-based travel had been becoming more and more

important through the Bronze Age. Copper’s effective replacement by bronze

involved imports of tin, probably from Cornwall or Iberia (Breen & Forsythe

2004: 36). Whether vessels themselves were incorporated into rituals is a

fascinating possibility. The heavy use of boat imagery in prehistoric

Scandinavian religious symbolism was no doubt due to the social importance

of fishing and sea travel, as well as the growing need here also for foreign

metal resources (Ballard et al. 2003: 386). This Scandinavian boat

symbolism, interestingly, was very often employed in funerary contexts. By

the LBA there (c.1300 BC), burials were occurring in stone frames of boat

form – undoubtedly related to earlier prehistoric open water interments, and

to the famous burials at sea of Viking times. There is also evidence of British

late prehistoric to early medieval burials incorporating boats, thanks to the

careful excavation of an EBA cemetery from Dalgerty in Fife (De Courcy

Ireland 1986: 15). Of course, a later and higher-status example of this is

Sutton Hoo. No such direct remains of burial-boat links have come to light in

Ireland, but some possibilities exist of less overt boat use in rituals. One fine

example would be the later, IA gold model from a bog at Broighter (Derry)

(Figure 13). Another example comes in the form of two ash boat paddles

found parallel to each other at the LBA lake settlement of Confinlough

(Offaly) (Figure 13). One paddle was broken and two curious perforations

were made on its shaft. These resemble a series of holes pierced on either

side of the second blade. Breen and Forsythe (2004: 34) view these holes on

the second paddle as functional, regularising blade movement in the shallow

waters of the lake. This may be accurate, but the parallel deposition of these

paddles, and the fact that one was broken and had perforations in its shaft

that defy utilitarian explanation, all suggests to me deliberate action of a

symbolic nature. Interestingly, the paddles show a marked resemblance to

the miniature gold poles found with the Broighter model (Breen & Forsythe

2004: 35). Interpretation of these few Irish remains is as yet at an immature

stage, but upon this preliminary basis one could argue for the occasional use

of boats – modest in comparison with contemporary Scandinavian and other

traditions – in late prehistoric Irish ritual. Connections with death or burial

may have been non-existent, but in view of overseas patterns and the

Figure 13 (from left to right): The boat model deposited in the marsh waters of Broighter (Derry), c.100 BC; and the paddles from Confinlough LBA lake settlement (Offaly), in situ and parallel to each other, with the perforations clearly visible on one blade (from museum.ie and O’Sullivan 1998: 85 respectively).

common use in early Ireland of watery places for death-related rituals, this

must remain at least a possibility worth mentioning.

The general impression from the LBA evidence, then, is one of diversification

of practice and meaning in aquatic ritual. A greater variety of objects were

deposited in wet places than throughout earlier periods. The use of high-

status ceremonial objects strongly suggests that the hierarchical channelling

and control of such practices reached new levels in the LBA. The most

captivating evidence for this is the artificial pool constructed at King’s Stables

(c.1100–800 BC) in the environs of the great Late Bronze Age-Iron Age

chiefly centre of Navan Fort (Lynn 1977; Ramsey 1995: 74). Recovered from

this were clay moulds for swords, partially articulated animal bones, red deer

antler and, most provocatively, the facial portion of a young man’s skull.

Given the contextual history of such objects, we may take these to be the

Figure 14 (from left to right): A plan of the artifical pool at King’s Stables (Armagh); And its relationship to Haughey’s Fort as well as that of Loughnashade to Emain Macha (from Lynn 1977 and Cooney & Grogan 1999: 148 respectively). Human skulls, skull fragments, bodies and body parts have also been recovered from Drumman More Lake (Armagh), Lagore (Fermanagh), Moynagh Lough (Meath) and Ballinderry (Offaly) and many other Bronze Age aquatic sites around Ireland (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 146-148, 156). Also seen as ideologically related to wooden anthropomorphic figurines such as those from bogs at Ralaghan (Kilkenny) and Lagore (Cavan), these human remains are generally thought of as token burials or aquatic offerings (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 230; Waddell 1995: 160). They are often also often interpretatively associated with the human sacrifice bog bodies of late prehistoric Ireland and northwest Europe – a view discussed in the next chapter.

remnants of ritual object deposition in a built pool below – and therefore on

display to – Haughey’s Fort about two hundred metres away (Figure 14).

Rather than a river or some other shared site for élite conspicuous disposal,

the ritual use of this pool must have been closely monitored by the Navan

fort leadership alone. As with the Late Neolithic pool at Brú na Bóinne,

reflected here is a willingness to manipulate rather than merely supplicate

nature, a religious shift born of centralised hierarchical need for control.

THE BRONZE AGE: DIVERSIFYING, CENTRALISING

Thus, as with tombs and other important liminal foci in the landscape, ritual

interaction with the aquatic may have begun with a primordial desire to

establish territorial claims or, less confrontationally, a sense of space

(Cooney & Grogan 1999: 210) and also to commune with the numinous –

instincts subsequently exacerbated by early farmers’ climatic worries. But

such does not explain the overall quantitative and qualitative rise in aquatic

deposits through the Irish Bronze Age, as elsewhere in Europe. The shift in

what was thought of as the appropriate ritual use for metals was connected

closely with burial practice and symbolism, and can only have been brought

about by the attentions of ranked individuals – self-serving and pious – who

were compelled and compelled to the waters’ edge. As we shall now see,

these social and ideological priorities would be maintained with but few

alterations until the general acceptance in Ireland of religious direction from

Rome.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE IRON AGE

The study of this final period in Irish prehistory (IA: c.300 BC–AD 500) is

most exciting because of the level of insight available to us regarding ritual

and belief. But before engaging with this, we must backtrack a little, recalling

the statement made in the last section that LBA-IA Irish society was heavily

influenced in its upper echelons by ‘Celtic culture’. In justifying this statement

now, we set the background for perusing IA aquatic-related ritual.

Consideration of this issue will again emphasise – now with regard to the

LBA-IA transition – that continuity was at least as strong a feature of Irish

prehistoric religion as was change.

Figure 15: La Tène objects fortunately found on the Irish coast at Lisnacrogher (Antrim) (from O’Sullivan 1998: 98).

THE CULTURAL ORIGINS OF IRON AGE AQUATIC CULT

There has been much scholarly debate about how and when Celtic language

and attendant cultural change, clearly established there by the early historic

period, actually came to Ireland (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 174-184). The

traditional explanation has envisioned some form of population intrusion

associated with the perceived c.600–300 BC ’dark age’, for after this time

metalwork – including small amounts of La Tène and La Tène-influenced

objects – and other diagnostic elements of material culture are again

archaeologically visible (Figure 15) (Raftery 1984: 335; Laing & Laing 1990:

144). There certainly is strong evidence, most overtly in hillforts and artwork,

for IA Irish culture being deeply influenced by an assertive ‘Celtic’ presence

that bore considerable resemblance to pre-Roman Gaul and Britain.

However, as said, for the sake of our ulterior concern with diachronic

patterns it is necessary to make one expansionary point on this simplistic

picture.

The 600–300 BC period, as has been increasingly argued (for example, in

Raftery 1984), was not a cultural break but rather in many ways a transitional

phase within insular life as established during previous periods. Socially, we

see clear signs of fundamental continuity from the LBA in the maintenance of

settlement locations and forms, in burial practices and in cemetery locations

(Burenhult 1980: 40-47; 1984: 60; Cooney & Grogan 1999: 180-187, 199;

Lynn 1986: 16; Robertson 1992: 30). Further strong ideological connections

are suggested by the LBA-IA similarity in preferred metalwork deposition

contexts and distribution patterns, with ’hoards’ still predominantly located in

bogs and single finds in open water. Most compelling are discoveries such

as those at Lisnacrogher (Antrim), Toom (Down), Galway (Galway),

Loughnashade (Armagh) and various other riverine, lacustrine and coastal

places. These illustrate the maintenance of the insular association of

weapons in particular and water, in rituals carried out at specific age-old holy

sites (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 185, 196-198; Raftery 1991: 29). ‘Cumulative

Celticity’ (Hawkes 1972) seems to have worked both ways, new practices

blending with ancient Irish religious traditions.

NEW SOURCES

In light of these strong LBA-IA social and cultural connections, it could be

said that our discussion of the use of aquatic sites in IA interactions with the

transcendent will in many ways continue to consider the same beliefs and

underlying social concerns focused upon in the last chapter. However, our

viewpoint will change, for the archaeological evidence will now be

supplemented by written and folkloric sources. This is justified on the

grounds that, firstly, many parts of roughly contemporary central and western

Europe exhibited a similarly Celticised material culture. Ideological as well as

cultural and linguistic connections between regions are provided by certain

ceremonial structures, art forms and the use of objects such as Hallstatt and

La Tène swords – in western France, eastern Britain and Ireland often

employed as aquatic offerings (Cooney & Grogan 1999: 177-178). In light of

this, because the end of prehistory in Ireland was contemporaneous with

early historic times elsewhere in Celticised Europe, comparison between the

two will legitimise our supplementation of the primary archaeological

evidence from Ireland with ancient Mediterranean written references to

‘Celtic’ religious beliefs. These accounts may be tired, overused and often

misleading, but potential in them is a fresh source of cautious insight into

prehistoric Irish religion.

Secondly, early Christian writings in Ireland were heavily shaped by the

agenda of their clerical authors, but they nevertheless inevitably contain

valuable references to the IA beliefs and worldview with which the new

ideology fought and was fused. The Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis is

perhaps the most famous example of this.

Finally, although much of the folkloric tradition has its origins in centuries far

subsequent to the end of the IA, the surprising longevity of many beliefs and

practices which we have witnessed to be a feature of Irish prehistory

undoubtedly traced through historic times also. Ranked individuals were

intensely compelled to abandon tradition in the face of Christian ideology and

all its social advantages (Mytum 1992), but at local and low-status levels a

largely unchanging framework of economic and social requirements would

permit at least partial survival of pagan belief.5 As in the case of a man by

the name of Gilla Lugán, who as late as 1084 entered Newgrange seeking

oracles from the pagan deity Aenghus Óg (Carey 1999: 21), there are

numerous instances of Irish folk traditions that can confidently be traced back

to pre-Christian times.

Using this array of relevant surviving documentary accounts to supplement

the direct archaeological evidence, we will cautiously reconstruct insights into

the actual cognitive reality of IA aquatic-associated belief and ritual – a

methodological opportunity not to be missed, and one that will in tentative

turn hopefully add flesh to the bones of belief assembled across previous

chapters.

PROTOHISTORIC RELIGIOUS INTERACTION WITH THE AQUATIC

We are given hints of how ’Celtic’ Irish society perceived the aquatic, as it

ripples in and out of their mythologies, in accounts by and about these most

imaginative of peoples. The Vita Columba (c.AD 800) tells of an encounter

between the saint and an unknown youth on the shores of Lough Foyle

(Derry). The youth speaks of a land long since covered by the waters of the

lough, a form of Atlantis tale which features widely in literature referring to

pre-Christian Irish belief (Carey 1999: 3-10). For IA insular society, the

cosmological role of the aquatic was not trivial: as Webster has noticed

(1986: 36-37), tales of high-sea adventure abound in early writings and,

while Romans dreamed of an Age of Saturn, Moslems of a garden paradise

and Christians a celestial heaven, like the similarly sea-bound Greeks the

Irish ‘Celts’ envisioned a maritime place of plenty, Tír na nÓg (The Land of

5 here we recall that the very word ‘pagan’ was born through reference to country folk too

poor or distant for participation in the hierarchical urban cults of ancient Greece

Youth). Various festivals incorporated watery sites and related rites. As to

aquatic ritual in daily life, the mythological and archaeological remains

present us with an ambiguous medley of cognitive currents. Folklore reflects

a constant magico-religious use of nature to ensure welfare, as in the

placement of live shellfish at each corner of houses to bring luck in fishing

and shore gathering (Ó Danachair 1972) or the use of uisce na dtrí teorann

(water taken from the boundary point of three farms or townlands) to defend

against spirits ruining the butter on May Day’s Eve (Ó Danachair 1972: 110).

We can expect such practices to have occurred right through the many

economically unstable centuries immemorial to folklore, but as with previous

periods almost all that remains of aquatic rituals from IA times are offerings

left in sacred waters. Let us start with some of these objects and rituals,

before looking at an example of a festive gathering with particular aquatic

associations. We might then draw general conclusions about IA aquatic cult.

AQUATIC OFFERINGS IN COLOUR

As said, water deposit patterns and the wealth of group finds such as at

Loughnashade, Mooghaun North, and Broighter demonstrate that prestige

object deposition‘s social function in the IA continued to be that of

conspicuous consumption. The preferred resting place for IA weapons was

still in rivers – an Irish trend mirrored in Britain and western France, and

often contrasted with the tendency in contemporary central Europe for

predominant use of ornaments rather than weapons as aquatic offerings, as

at Giant’s Springs in the Czech Republic (Bradley 1990: 153; Eogan 1965:

14; Green 1997: 140; Hawkes 1976). However, as in the LBA, this to some

extent significant difference cannot be too strongly proposed as evidence for

exclusive ideological connections between river-associated belief and martial

values in ’Celtic’ regions, and lack of this link further east. Many IA

ornaments and items of jewellery have been found in Irish and western

European rivers and open water sites, such as at Baile na nGall (Kerry) and

Llyn Cerrig Bach in Wales, and there exist examples of central European

explicit use of warrior imagery in aquatic ritual contexts, as on the c.100 BC

Gundestrup cauldron, found in Denmark but produced in Slovakia (Figure

16)(Piggott 1974: 63). Hodder’s (1982) comment on the symbolic meaning of

objects often going beyond their practical function remains pertinent here.

There was clearly more to ideologies connected with river offerings than that

of warriors which most immediately confronts the observer. Tacitus (De

Germania: 13) speaks of Germanic attempts at communication with the

supernatural via rivers especially, with the spiritual communicative potency of

frontier rivers resulting in inter-tribal quarrels over access. As in Ireland in

this and preceding periods, and indeed across western Europe, many such

holy sites on rivers were in fact fords, which suggests that as well as status

assertion these aquatic rituals had much to do with territoriality. Similarly,

there was an old tradition in Cork Harbour, said to have been ancient by the

eighteenth century of our era, whereby the mayor and town leaders would

throw a ‘dart’ into the sea ‘as a testimony of their jurisdiction’ (Ó Danachair

1986: 73, from Croker 1969: 211-212). I suspect this bears some

resemblance to the reality of IA high-status aquatic depositions.

Nevertheless, such an image would not represent the fullness of the cult for

ancient society as a whole. More mundane, non-aristocratic concerns must

also have been expressed through aquatic ritual. The Irish folkloric record

reveals that the same prehistoric main focal points of aquatic votives, such

as Lough Gur, were in post-medieval times still revered and traditionally

believed to be places of important deceased personage apparition, as well

as the homes of often threatening spirits. These were to be kept at bay with

token offerings, of little material value and unlikely to have survived the

ravages of time (Ó Danachair 1972: 121-122). At stake was not prestige and

territorial control, but rather the safety of children, herds, produce and crops.

Another aspect of IA aquatic-related ritual and belief is suggested by the

anthropomorphic wooden figurines occasionally found in watery places, such

as that from Shercock (Cavan) (Figure 16). These have Bronze Age

antecedents, and seem to have been frequently related to healing cults. The

Fontes Sequanae at the source of the Seine in France – a river named, like

the Boyne in Ireland and many others in western Europe, after the ‘Celtic’

goddess resident there – yielded nearly two hundred pre-Roman wooden

figurines (Figure 16). These may be deity depictions but, as with the Minoan

peak sanctuary offerings of Bronze Age Crete (Peatfield 1992), the variety of

heads, limbs, internal organs and genitals represented suggests that these

were votives reminding the goddess of particular complaints. Indeed,

documentary sources refer to healing cults at the Fontes Sequanae, as well

as at other river sources, springs and watery places in and beyond Roman

Gaul. And as Green (1997: 160-166) points out, this may have extended to

the sea. The syncretised ‘Celtic’ god Apollo Morltasgus, whose healing

powers resonated from the thermal waters of Mont Auxois oppidum, had a

name which meant ‘masses of sea water’. The goddess Nehalennia may

also have been associated with healing; her worship centred at Domburg

and Colijnsplaat, from whence she watched over seamen, traders and all in

need of protection during sea voyages. And the Nodens sanctuary at Lydney

(Gloucestershire) incorporated marine imagery, albeit from the Roman

period. Awareness of this potential maritime aspect to ‘Celtic’ healing cults

might aid interpretations of the LBA-IA objects on occasion fortunately

recovered from the dynamic Irish coastline (Harbison 1988: 28-29; Raftery

1994: 143). In broader terms, the ‘Celtic’ (and pre-Celtic) belief that certain

watery sites and their resident spirits were infused with healing powers was

strongly carried into recorded, partly-Christianised folkloric tradition. As well

as warning against a simplistic, warrior-centred aquatic belief system, this

demonstrates that the agricultural improvements of the IA (Caulfield 1977)

and afterwards did not prevent health and sustenance problems from

remaining very real and serious stimuli for religious behaviour.

One perhaps especially significant type of ‘Celtic’ aquatic offering, potentially

related to certain anthropomorphic figures, are cauldrons. The fact that,

Figure 16 (clockwise from top left): Wooden figurine from Shercock (Cavan); Wooden head offered at the source of the Seine in France, c.100 BC; The famous Gundestrup cauldron; With detail of potential human sacrifice and martial scene; And an Irish LBA-IA cauldron from a bog at Fourknocks (Meath) (from Piggott 1974: 85; Green 1997: 151, angelfire.com, djames.demon.co.uk and shee-eire.ie respectively).

in Ireland as elsewhere, the overwhelming majority of these LBA-IA objects

yet found have come from watery sites (Figure 16) (Harbison 1988: 115,184)

almost certainly indicates for them a specialised function within aquatic

rituals. As said, cauldrons were often placed in bogs and in some cases have

been found containing high-status offerings, leading to Eogan’s (1993: 131)

‘memorial deposits for a deceased person’ identification. Green (1977: 167)

prefers to emphasise the water-carrying function of these objects, and

relates their incorporation in rituals to climatic humidification worries. This

may have played a part but, aside from the already-discussed problems of

relating aquatic (and dryland) deposition offerings too closely to

environmental change, another theory for the ritual function of cauldrons

holds more evidential water regarding their actual cult use. Decorating the

aforementioned Gundestrup cauldron is a depiction of what may be a human

sacrifice into a cauldron (Figure 16) (Piggott 1974: 64, 179). In light of this,

as with their Bronze Age antecedents some anthropomorphic figures may

have functioned as representations of ‘bog body‘ human sacrifices. Such an

interpretation is given especial weight by the wide western European

occurrence in aquatic ritual contexts of bog bodies, human skulls and bones

from late prehistory.

‘CAPITAL PUNISHMENT’

The bog body phenomenon first occurred in the Mesolithic, with subsequent

periodic and regional concentrations but generally growing in quantitative

intensity into the Iron and Middle Ages (van der Sanden 1996: 178).

Mesolithic and Neolithic examples seem more likely to have been burials or

dead votive offerings, but forensic investigations of many BA-IA (and

medieval) bog bodies in Ireland and elsewhere have established beyond

doubt that in their cases the cause of death was ritual murder. The hanging,

strangling, garrotting, throat-slitting, stabbing and decapitating – or indeed a

combination of some of these – which victims such the Gallagh Man

(Galway) suffered in c.300 BC adds up to overwhelming proof for murder

(Figure 17). A variety of evidence points to these killings being of a ritual

nature. Stakes were placed around some bodies. Many victims were bound

by or left with hazel rods, a trend calling to mind the Romano-British curse

tablet from East Anglia which actually describes a sacrifice, incorporating

hazel, to the water god Neptune (Wells & Hodgkinson 2001: 170).

Amongst the final meals of victims, the state-altering fungi taken by certain

Danish examples may have their ‘Celtic’ equivalent in the mistletoe from the

bellies of the Gallagh bog body and the Lindow Man (c.300 BC). As well as

the nerve-calming, cramp-curing, vertigo-easing and palsy-combating effects

of this plant, we must note Pliny the Elder’s reference (Naturalis Historia:

16:95) to Druidic ritual use of mistletoe. It is perhaps also relevant to cite

Ross’ proposal (1989) that the charred piece of cake found in the Lindow

Man’s stomach arrived there through some variant of the Beltain festival,

originally ‘Celtic’, still taking place in Perthshire in the eighteenth century:

whoever received the charred piece of cake during the principal feast was

set upon by their fellow celebrants and became the mock sacrificial victim. I

do not think we can hope to recover such specifics for ancient practices, but

given all the favourable evidence we can nevertheless be confident that

‘Celtic’ groups, as part of a wider north-western European tradition, practiced

ritual killing in bogs – activity not by any means stamped out by Roman and

Christian authorities.

Figure 17: The Gallagh Man (Galway), who was killed and left in a bog in c.300 BC (both from museum.ie).

The purpose of and belief behind human sacrifices in bogs seems quite

clear. Tacitus (Germania: chapter eight) referred to the ‘capital punishment’

of disgraced Germans in swamps and bogs, even including the common

stake detail (van der Sanden 1996: 167). In ‘Celtic’ society, war prisoners

seem to have provided especially convenient victims (Green 1997: 144-145).

This social function of bog killings was important enough to see them ratified

in certain medieval law tracts (van der Sanden 1996: 167). It may be thought

of as an internally-focused expression of territoriality, in that it provided the

mechanism for removal of undesirables from society, thereby upholding

social norms and cementing popular stability. Yet such drastic activity would

have to have been sanctioned by religion. In Ireland as elsewhere the

religious associations of bogs were long honoured by IA times; the

conceptual link between bog sacrifices and the many IA offerings placed in

watery places for communication with the divine was undoubtedly real.

Danish bogs in which ancient human sacrifices have been found still retain

their religious names. The extremely brutal deaths suffered by many victims

may have been required by complications of belief such as the ‘triple death’

concept of medieval literature, to which the use of stakes for holding bodies

down may have been related. It seems, thus, that just as von Amira long ago

proposed (1922), ritual killings in bogs served the purpose of removing social

undesirables and reaffirming cultural values, whilst at the same time

providing potent sacrifices to the numinous aquatic.

BUSINESS AND PLEASURE IN IRON AGE WATER CULT

‘Celtic’ calendrical festivals were orientated around the agricultural cycle,

indicating the economic importance of this subsistence strategy. Interwoven

in and between such festivals, however, were beliefs and rituals drawing on

the aquatic. The gods who peopled the ‘Celtic’ landscape most often took up

their abodes in lakes, rivers and springs, and less often in woods and sídhe

(sacred hills, often earlier prehistoric burial places such as Newgrange)

(Webster 1986: 23-24). Thus, the winter festival of Samhain, which saw the

emergence of spirits from their dwellings, undoubtedly involved veneration at

these predominantly aquatic sites (Webster 1986: 31-32). Similarly, during

the harvest festival of Lughnasa ritual gatherings took place by lakes and

springs, amongst other holy places (Webster 1986: 34).

In fact, this Lughnasa festival is especially relevant to our subject. Remnants

of it, now highly influenced by neo-paganism, still survive across much of

what was ‘Celtic’ western Europe – another indication of inter-regional

cultural connections. The Irish form of the festival seems to have its roots in

lake gatherings (Mac Néill 1962: 1, 11, 243). That many Lughnasa

gatherings of folkloric tradition were and are celebrated at the same places

as the óenaige (royal assemblies, singular óenach) known to have existed in

Ireland from at least IA times (Swift 2000) suggests some developmental

connection between the two. Thus, as well as times of festive activity,

óenaige served as status reaffirmation occasions during which the

ceremonial acceptance of gifts between tribal lords and kings amounted to

statements of personal loyalty, military commitment and political submission

(Swift 2000). This Lughnasa festival-óenaige link has particular documentary

support, for example, at Aughris (Mayo), the Old Clocher Fair (Tyrone), and

the Pattern of Shantemon (Cavan) (Fitzpatrick 2001: 71-72), and is

furthermore attested to by the fact that like Lughnasa festivals, many óenaige

also made use of pools, lakes and other watery places. The most famous

such meeting, Óenach Tailten (Meath), required the construction of no less

than four artificial pools. Other óenaige also incorporating lakes included

Óenach Carmain on the River Liffey, and another at Lough Gur (Mac Néill:

339, 344-348).

The religious connotations of these pools as referred to in medieval sources

are undoubted. One of the constructions from Óenach Tailten is still known

as Doolough (dubh-lough, the black lake) or Leary’s Hole, due to being

remembered as the place to which St. Patrick condemned the spirit of

Laoghaire, the last pagan king of Ireland (Mac Néill: 338). The frequent

association with watery places, as said, derived from the Lughnasa festival

link. But also, the choice to locate óenaige at pools, lakes, and rivers – or

indeed other liminal places such as tombs and pillars (Swift 2000) – was

necessary and natural, because of the weight to these public ceremonies

which such spiritual sites would grant. Although no Lughnasa-óenach aquatic

inclusions have been excavated and thus are yet to provide evidence for

potential rituals and offerings, we might wonder whether they bear any close

functional and ideological relation to those previously-discussed pools

constructed at LBA-IA hillforts such as Navan Fort and Tara.

Figure 18: Depiction of a horse swimming contest at Lough Owel (Westmeath), c. AD 1837 (from Mac Néill 1962: illustrations section).

Beyond the politically-charged óenaige, Lughnasa festival remnants as

preserved by folkloric tradition also suggest other ancient rituals. At Lough

Owel (Westmeath) and Lough Keeran (Mayo), the festival involved racing

horses into and across stretches of water. This wild, dangerous social event

served as a rite of passage for young participants, often resulting in marriage

agreements for those men who accounted well for themselves (Figure 18). At

the same time, spancels and halters, along with some butter, were thrown

into the water to ensure the blessing of resident spirits on horses and cattle

respectively. Clerical disapproval for this practice shows that it was not

founded in ecclesiastical tradition (Ó Danachair 1972: 174-175). It is perhaps

worth mentioning that Lough Owel is associated with the spirit of the great

‘Celtic’ pagan warrior Fionn Mac Cumhaill (Mac Néill: 243). The driving of

horses into the sea that took place during ancient Galway Bay Lughnasa

festivals-óenaige has been proposed as the remnant of an ancient sacrifice

to the ‘Celtic’ sea god, Mannannán, for in the post-medieval form of this

activity, the horses were victims of (mostly failed) attempts at prevention from

returning ashore (Mac Néill: 294).

At Aughris (Figure 19), Lughnasa activities today naturally include prayers

and rituals directed at St. Patrick, but as so often occurs in Ireland these take

place at a particular well (Fitzpatrick 2001). The pre-Christian origin of festive

activities and óenaige is suggested by the name Aughris itself. This derives

from the Old Irish eachros, meaning ‘horse headland‘. The use of ech here, a

Goidelic form of the proto-Indo-European word for horse, indicates pre-

seventh century AD and probably pre-Christian origins for the site name

(Fitzpatrick 2001); the connection with the horseracing and horse swimming

elements of Lughnasa festivals-óenaige is also unlikely to be coincidental.

More speculative readings again are possible with regard to aquatic cult at

the Aughris site. Amongst its mostly uninvestigated IA-medieval archaeology,

which includes a large univallate ringfort, certain enigmatic earthwork

structures bear some resemblance to the artificial aquatic features of other

óenaige sites (Figure 19). Although there is no evidence for it, the coastal

location of the site may indicate a sea-orientated aspect to ancient festive

and óenaige rituals at Aughris.

THE IRON AGE: A FULLER VISTA

The Iron Age flowed, culturally, from the Bronze Age. We have seen this in

site continuities, but more particularly in the similar ways in which material

culture and the aquatic environment were used in both periods to express

religious beliefs and, unconsciously, socio-economic concerns also.

Furthermore, the broadening of our source base in this chapter has opened a

fuller vista over Iron Age aquatic cult and maritime spiritscapes than could be

justified for study of previous periods. We have thus aimed in this section to

complement the last in particular, in the sense that we have looked beyond

the material remnants of aquatic depositions and the placement of human

and faunal remains in water – mere physical footprints of people’s aquatic-

focused expressions of religious belief and socio-economic concerns. For the

IA, and less directly for the many generations upon which its religious

tradition rested, the use of written and folkloric evidence has supported my

fundamental thesis that people’s interaction with the numinous aquatic was

carried through the lens of death, the dead and beliefs connected with some

form of spiritual otherworld. We have also seen that hierarchical agendas,

territorial claims and social stability continued to provide the stimuli for much

water-associated religious activity in the IA. Yet of equal importance has

been the broadening of this vision to include the common, the everyday and

the low-status elements in aquatic cult. Given the strong strain of economic

instability which doubtless coursed through Irish prehistory, magico-religious

activities incorporating the water upon which survival so heavily rested – or

rather, precariously floated – naturally made up the majority of aquatic rituals

in the IA. This would have been the case from the first human presence on

Ireland’s shores. The compulsion for aquatic ritual activity, subject also to

social mores, would only have been exacerbated by worries over an

increasingly damp climate. But here we encroach upon the broad diachronic

view of continuity and change through Irish prehistory, which deserves a

chapter of its own.

Figure 19 (from top to bottom): The distribution of archaeological sites on the westerns side of Aughris headland (Mayo). Many of these sites are unexcavated and only vaguely defined. Those marked ‘circular enclosure’ have potential, if no more, as artificial pools; The dynamic maritime landscape in which the Aughris óenaige-Lughnasa festivals were held, and at which their neo-paganised folk remnants survive (from Fitzpatrick 2001: 68 and 80 respectively).

CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSIONS

THE LIFESPAN OF DEATH

On our voyage through prehistoric Ireland we have witnessed a great deal of

interactions with the numinous aquatic over a great deal of time: relatively

modest hunter-gatherer beginnings, to more brazen shapings of the spiritual

environment from the Middle Neolithic, and on through the increasingly

common late prehistoric partiality towards ritual deposition of objects in

watery places. Upon disembarking, we ask ourselves: is there anything that

binds and unifies this array of water cult expression? As proposed in the

Introduction and maintained ever since, I think so. There was undoubtedly

considerable complexity in the fluid beliefs and stimuli that shaped the use of

liminal places like the aquatic for religious purposes in each period, but at a

fundamental level the majority of religious uses of watery places throughout

Irish prehistory had in common their connections with death. Via comparison

with roughly contemporary European and present-day hunter-gatherer

evidence, it has been argued that Irish Mesolithic dead were often left in

aquatic places. We have seen how engrained in many hunter-gatherer

cosmologies and surviving right into historic times is the cosmological link

between watery places and death, life and regeneration themes.

Unsurprisingly then, in the Neolithic we find bog bodies and the construction

of pools by major tomb complexes. Given artistic similarities and certain

locational correspondences between passage tombs and petroglyphs, Irish

rock art and indeed its other Atlantic cousins may have been indirectly

related to death themes and the invocation of ancestral beings to uphold

territorial claims.

As to aquatic depositions, we cannot convincingly associate this

phenomenon with funerary rituals and concepts until the Bronze Age, when

certain objects – principally weapons, and at least in terms of the final

function within their object life – move from burial contexts to being more and

more exclusively used as votives in nearby aquatic sites. The Bronze Age to

medieval practice of ritual murder in bogs provides the most dramatic

evidence for religious ideological connections between the aquatic and

death. If we are justified in using them, as I believe we are, the ancient

written records and to a great extent the post-medieval folkloric sources

bespeak a more subtle interweaving of water cult into the rest of daily life.

The battle for the fish, the crops, the rearing of children – all of this was a

battle against sickness, hunger and ultimately death, which often found its

religious expression in aquatic ritual, due to cosmological traditions and the

curative, regenerative powers deeply engrained in the cultural psyches as

attributed to watery places.

The continuity we have witnessed in both belief and practice regarding Irish

interactions with the numinous aquatic is quite astonishing. The various

phenomena born of this all seem closely bound up in themes of death, as

well as the generation and life concepts with which death formed an almost

seamless ideological whole. That a tradition rooted in such fundamental

concerns could so resiliently survive the socio-cultural movements of the

millennia is not in some ways surprising, given the inevitable centrality of

these themes in the lives of all people. At the same time, awareness of the

powerful continuity in this realm of prehistoric Irish religion heavily re-

emphasises the inaccuracy of periodic divisions on this most important level

of socio-cultural life. Indeed, through awareness of such continuity we are

made aware of just how close we are to our prehistoric ancestors.

WEATHER AND THE WEALTHY

Before concluding, there is one further pattern within our subject which

requires comment. For as well as continuity, we have seen much diachronic

and inter-regional change within prehistoric Irish aquatic-associated ritual

activity. Basing themselves on a fundamental, common ideological

inspiration in death, these changes are most revealing of the cultures and

societies who upheld communion with the transcendent. As said, every

religion takes its form not directly from the natural environment but rather is

sculpted and resculpted by the changing needs of its ever-needful

adherents. Thus, the Mesolithic cult uses of the aquatic were tentative,

supplicative and reflective of egalitarian social forms. The rise of rock art and

the construction of an artificial pool within the tomb complex of Brú na

Bóinne, as well as the very tomb monuments themselves, indicates an

important shift of landscape enculturation into the realm of moulding and

manipulation. In this shift we perceive the development of hierachisation and

centralisation of society. These Neolithic ritual changes can also in part be

thought of as new expressions of long-held territoriality concerns, now

gaining momentum in response to population increases. If Bradley’s

powerfully-argued interpretation of Atlantic rock art is accurate, petroglyphs

can be taken as having formed the most overt statement of these escalating

Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age worries over tribal territorial rights to highly

contested marginal areas of fertile land. The assumption upon which this is

based, that a ‘tribe’ identity existed during this period, is in fact suggested by

the centralising of contemporary ritual life around those same tomb

monuments.

Regarding the growth from the Bronze Age in the number of objects

deposited in watery places, there can be two explanations. One is that the

increasing wetness of the Irish climate, as elsewhere in Europe, granted

greater and greater urgency to supplications of the numinous aquatic (with

dryland deposits the linked result of linked soil deterioration worries). But

such an explanation fails to explain the gradual spread of this developed

deposition phenomenon – for we remember it was already in place by the

Neolithic at least – from south to north. The connection here, as O’Flaherty

has clearly established, seems to have been with the concomitant diffusion

of single burials. This has been noted as one link in a long diachronic chain

of aquatic ritual and death intertwinings. Rather than born of climatic worries

alone, then, I believe the rise in frequency of aquatic depositions through the

Bronze Age was socially driven. If this was the case, the main propellant was

undoubtedly the concept of conspicuous wealth disposal. We recall the

overall progression through the Bronze Age towards a social landscape

dominated by regional hillfort centres, and by the investment of wealth in

personal adornment. In such a climate of social advancement achievable

through control and use of wealth, rituals involving the conspicuous disposal

of metal objects full of socially-loaded symbolism would have been most

useful for ranked individuals’ ambitious needs. This trend culminated in the

now-Celticised LBA and IA construction of pools, perhaps for use in

ceremonies later developed as the Lughnasa festivals-óenaige. Social

mores, then – or at least those of the aristocracy controlling wealth – made

use of an existing water cult to demonstrate and reaffirm social structures.

This may well have served a territoriality function also, given the constant

feuding over land and wealth which is such a strong feature of early historic

inter-kingdom relations in Ireland and Europe. The same territorial

requirements have been proposed as the social inspiration for the late

prehistoric increase in numbers of bog bodies and human remains placed in

aquatic contexts.

Of course, much changed with the gradual medieval removal of the old

pagan socio-religious system, with the result that by the period in which folk

ritual practices were being recorded in the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, the hierarchical head had been removed from the traditional ritual

body. Thus, apart from Christian manipulations and remnant cases such as

that mentioned from Cork Harbour, insular aquatic cult was effectively

levelled again to the egalitarian base from which many millennia previously it

had begun.

THE NUMINOUS AQUATIC: ALL SEAS HAVE SHORES

The analytical approach taken in this study, embracing the fullness of Irish

prehistory, has allowed us to trace some important long-term patterns of

continuity and change in the ways in which the early Irish interacted with the

perceived spirits resident at watery places. Due to climatic change, but more

directly as a result of socio-economic pressures, aquatic ritual became more

intensely practiced. We have emphasised its particular ideological

connections with death-related themes, supported by territoriality concerns

and the desire for maintenance of social hierarchies. But it is important, in

finishing, not to commit the common scholarly crime of exaggerating one’s

topic. Despite its ever-greater importance, the numinous aquatic did not

dominate prehistoric Irish symbolic perceptions and spiritual paradigms, as

was the case in early Scandinavia for instance (Ballard et al. 2003). In this

latter region economic and thus social concerns propelled the maritime to the

forefront of religious symbolism. This was partly the case in Ireland, but – as

continuing into modern history and in contrast with areas like Scandinavia –

after the Mesolithic, reliance on the sea became reduced. The result of this

was that, in the final analysis, the numinous aquatic did not dominate the

spiritual paradigms of prehistoric Ireland, but rather flowed through a wider

spiritscape in which it played a defined, surprisingly long-lived and yet

socially responsive role.

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