Pictures from the excavation of a 5,000-year-old passage-tomb at the Hellfire Club overlooking Dublin

The excavation of a 5,000-year-old passage-tomb located at the Hellfire Club on Montpelier Hill overlooking Dublin is significant for a number of reasons. It's the first excavation of a passage-tomb in about 20 years, and its location on a hill with sweeping views down across the Irish capital city of Dublin makes it a truly unique archaeological dig.

There are fantastic views of Dublin city from Montpelier Hill, where the Hellfire Club dig is located.

However, the dig, led by Neil Jackman of Abarta Heritage, is significant for other reasons too. Firstly, the dig will help to prove that the monument is, in fact, the remains of a Neolithic passage-tomb. Secondly, and more importantly, if radiocarbon dating is successful, it will be the first time that a monument in the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains cluster of passage-tombs is properly dated. Some of these monuments were excavated in the early 20th century, in pre-carbon dating times.

Visiting children from a Dublin school find out about the excavation at the Hellfire Club.

Regrettably, the monument has been much disturbed and partially destroyed. Large amounts of cairn stones were removed for the construction of a building known as the Hellfire Club, which was originally built as a shooting lodge by politician William Connolly, in 1725. Larger stones, including most of the kerb stones and the structural passage and chamber stones, were believed to have been dug out and broken up as foundation material for the laying of the nearby Military Road about 200 years ago. So the passage-tomb at the Hellfire Club, although it was originally reasonably large in size at c.35m diameter, is now just a shadow of its former self.

The second trench which was excavated at the Hellfire passage-tomb.

However, the importance of the archaeological work is that it will help to date the site - and that will be exciting. For instance, archaeologists will want to know if the site perhaps predates the famous Boyne tombs of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. Perhaps these mountaintop cairns are as old as those in Loughcrew, Co. Meath, or even those in Co. Sligo.

The polished stone axe head which was found during the dig, being held by yours truly!

Very little remains of the internal structure, for reasons outlined above. However, parts of the central area of the cairn have been revealed during the dig, including some layering of turves, and a large stone believed to have been an orthostat, which was not removed two centuries ago, was also uncovered. One nice find was a polished axe head, which I was lucky to have been able to hold in my hand and photograph during the visit. Neil Jackman said the axe head shows no sign of having been used, leading him to speculate that perhaps it was left in the tomb as an offering.

Archaeologists working in one of the trenches of the ruined passage-tomb.

Because of my interest in mythology and place names, I find it very sad that the original name of this hill, plus any associated mythology, appears to have been lost. The name Montpelier Hill is certainly not Irish, although it has been suggested that the hill might be the place that was known as Suide Uí Ceallaig or Suidi Celi.(1)


Another thing that always interests me about passage-tombs is their relationship to other monuments and landscape features. While I was there, I was able to see that there is a grand vista that takes in huge amounts of the ancient landscape. This vista sweeps from the easy, with Fairy Castle on the mountain at Three Rock, across Dublin Bay to ancient Ben Edair, and taking in views in varying degrees of distance of places including the Cooley and Mourne Mountains, the Fourknocks ridge, Hill of Slane, the Hill of Tara, and even, far to the northwest, the ancient cairn-topped hills of Loughcrew in Co. Meath.

The Fairy Castle passage-tomb in Ballybrack townland, to the east of Montpelier Hill.

The archaeological dig at the Hellfire Club is finishing this week, after just four weeks of work. It will be interesting to see what carbon dates reveal about the age of the site. In the meantime, if you would like more information about the dig, visit the Abarta Heritage Hellfire Club Archaeological Project website.

Special thanks to Neil Jackman for allowing me to visit the site and take photographs. 

Neil Jackman showing a visiting teacher the polished stone axe head.

References:
(1) http://www.askaboutireland.ie/aai-files/assets/libraries/south-dublin-county-library/reading-room/Digital%20Books/Glenasmole%20Roads.pdf

Websites:
http://www.abartaheritage.ie/hellfire-club-archaeological-project/ 
https://www.facebook.com/AbartaHeritage
 

Ceremonial dismemberment and excarnation in prehistoric Ireland - a different way to treat the dead

For a while, I've been wondering about how the small human bone fragments that have been found in some Irish passage-tombs came to be in such a fragmented condition. In terms of the unburnt bone human fragments found during the O'Kelly excavations at Newgrange, "apart from some complete hand and foot bones, all human specimens consisted of small fragments". (O'Kelly, Newgrange: Archaeology, Art & Legend, Thames & Hudson, 1982). 

Replica of basin stone from Knowth's eastern chamber with bone fragments.

There were a total of 750 unidentifiable fragments. The fragmented remains of dozens of individuals were found in the chambers of nearby Knowth. Layers of fragmented remains were found in the passage and chamber of Fourknocks. So how do human bones - those that are not cremated - become so fragmented?

Searching through my extensive archive of research material, I found an interesting article from the Sunday Times from July 2003. Eileen Murphy of Queen's University Belfast had studied Irish neolithic bones and found that our early ancestors had dismembered and defleshed their dead. Murphy had worked on the excavation of graves in Aymyrlyg graves in Siberia, Russia.

There she learnt to look for the tell-tale signs of what is thought to have been an ancient religious practice - short, fine scraping marks on the bone and cuts where tendons and ligaments were joined.
"After studying the dismembered and refleshed Russian remains, I decided to have another look at Irish neolithic bones. It is something that has been overlooked before and will now require a reassessment of our understanding of these ancient burial sites.

The researchers from Queen's made the findings when examining bones from the 4,000-year-old Millin Bay tomb in County Down, and the discoveries mirrored those found by Swedish archaeologists at Carrowmore in Co. Sligo. The Sunday Times article described how body parts, notably skulls, are thought to have been kept on display for religious purposes.

Gabriel Cooney, professor of archaeology at University College Dublin, told the newspaper:

In these tombs you rarely find single skeletons, but rather groups of cremated remains. In this way these neolithic people would seem to have been creating a new identity from their treatment of the dead. You also find different parts of the body treated in different ways, such as unburnt parts of the skull in with cremated remains. This would point to dismembering of the corpses.

Were the Brugh na Bóinne bones defleshed by humans or
by the process of natural outdoor excarnation?

Not all corpses were dismembered by other humans. The process known as excarnation, or defleshing , is well documented. This involves leaving the human corpse out in the open (sometimes known as sky burial), or in a cave, for the elements and wildlife to assist in the process of speedy decomposition and dismemberment. Some "excarnation sites" were outdoors, while others were in caves. It is estimated that a human corpse left out in the open can be reduced to a pile of bones in a matter of weeks or months. However, there seems to have been a deliberate effort made, in some cases, to slow down the process of excarnation by leaving a corpse in a cave.

A chance finding of a bone fragment in a cave at Knocknarea in Sligo led to the discovery of more bone fragments belonging to an adult and a child which may have been evidence of cave excarnation. Radiocarbon dating put the age of the bones at over 5,000 years old. It is thought that the process of excarnation in a cave took much longer - perhaps up to two years - but eventually the deceased's relatives would come back to collect the bones for burial elsewhere. In the case of Knocknarea, this burial might have taken place in one of several monuments on the top of the mountain.

We can imagine, therefore, that Stone Age people in Sligo between 5,000 and 5,500 years ago carried the corpses of their dead up the mountain. After an arduous climb, they then squeezed through the narrow cave entrance, and laid the dead person on the cave floor. (Source)

What's also interesting in Ireland is that osteoarchaeological analysis has revealed an absence of animal scavenging marks, suggesting that the entrance to the excarnation caves was sealed during the process of soft tissue decomposition.

This reveals a conscious decision not to speed up decomposition . . . By creating a protective environment in which excarnation took place undisturbed, people controlled the process, pace and space. The living may have sought to observe the slow and gradual disintegration that was taking place inside a cave. The underground was therefore a place of transformation, which in turn transformed caves as places. It may have been in caves that the journey into the spirit world commenced. (Dowd, Marion, The Archaeology of Caves in Ireland, Oxbow Books, 2015, p. 106)

Flint blades from Newgrange - were these used in the defleshing process?

There are no caves in the vicinity of the great passage-tombs of the Boyne Valley. It would be interesting to postulate on how the fragmented unburnt remains there - and indeed at nearby Fourknocks - came to be in that condition. Of course another question that begs to be asked is how many of the flint scrapers and other flint tools found at Newgrange and other passage-tombs were used in the defleshing of human remains . . .

No passage-tomb under Millmount?

Millmount might not have been built on a Stone Age passage-tomb, a public presentation of archaeological data heard last night in Drogheda.

However, one intriguing possibility based on the results of advanced archaeological techniques is that it might perhaps have been built on a clay mound, like a barrow, a type of burial monument dating to the Bronze Age, and therefore later than the likes of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth.

Millmount might have been built on an ancient burial mound.

But it's still too early to say for certain what lies beneath the mound of Millmount, if anything. The new data is from the latest phase of the Millmount Archaeological Remote Sensing project, aptly shortened to MARS, because some of the technology being used is out of this world!

The presentation was given by Kevin Barton of Landscape and Geophysical Services (LGS), Conor Brady of the Department of Archaeology, Dundalk Institute of Technology, and Brendan Matthews, the Old Drogheda Society Community Historian.

The data presented last night was generated using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT). The GPR data was taken along eight transects of the mound, and Kevin Barton revealed that the signal "was totally absorbed" by the mound, indicating that it might consist largely of clay. This would seem to rule out the possibility that it is a cairn, built largely of stone, like Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. There was a possibility of a slight "overlapping of layers" of clay in the mound, but this was by no means definite.

The Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) data was perhaps the most exciting. This involves putting stainless steel electrodes into different parts of the mound and measuring the resistance based on Ohm's Law (Resistance equals voltage divided by current). A series of measurements were taken at the base of the mound, just above the modern revetment wall, spaced at 5 metres apart. There were four distinct "high resistance" areas along the perimeter of the base of the mound, with low resistance areas underneath them. Eighteenth century drawings show that Millmount had four towers around its base, and these four areas of high resistance might correspond to the location of those four towers.

Four sections of the mound were also measured using ERT, and Kevin Barton revealed results from these measurements which appeared to show a quite distinct area of low resistance at the core of the base of the mound. He said this area of low resistance would correspond in his mind to a large clay mound. However,  he said he could not rule out the possibility of a "cavity" in the interior - something like a passage-tomb or maybe a cist grave.

It would not have been uncommon for Bronze Age barrow to be built over a burial, which sometimes might be contained in a cist grave. This is basically a "box" consisting of large slabs of stone.

Community Historian Brendan Matthews suggested that a Bronze Age barrow-type mound might tie in with the mythology of the site, and that as the reputed burial place of Amergin, the figurehead of the Milesians who landed at the Boyne Estuary, a Bronze Age date might be more apt.

Earlier in the night, Conor Brady of DkIT gave an overview of the types of mounds found in Meath and Louth, including passage-tombs, barrows and a large number of unclassified mounds.

Brendan Matthews revealed that a small section of what might have been an earlier revetment wall, set back some distance from the modern wall, was found during a recent "cleaning up" of the site. He also showed a photo of a stone-lined drain which was found near the top of the mound.

Millmount as it looked in the 1740s, drawn by Thomas Wright.

He revealed that no major modifications had taken place at Millmount from around 1672 until the British fortified the site and built the martello tower on top of the mound in 1807-8. But in the mid 1780s a ditch around the base of the mound was filled in, and local people used it for gardening!

The presentation provoked a lot of questions from the audience, and there's no doubt it has focused minds on the possibility that Millmount is not a passage-tomb, and not, as suggested locally, contemporary with the great mounds of Brú na Bóinne.

However, there have been several people who reported in the 20th century that they had been inside a tunnel under Millmount, and so it is obvious from contemporary accounts that there is at least one subterranean passageway in there. Whether this is part of a passage-tomb structure, or maybe a medieval souterrain, or even perhaps tunnels built linking the 17th century towers is a matter of conjecture right now.

At this point, the Old Drogheda Society will be discussing the possibility of moving on to the next phase of the project, which involves a seismic technique that measures the response of sound waves through the monument. That could provide a more definitive overview of the mysterious mound of Millmount.

Comparative images of the possible monument at Ballyboy Lake, in the Boyne Valley near Dowth

This is a series of images of the possible archaeological feature at Ballyboy Lake, near Dowth, in the Boyne Valley, as seen on Google Earth, Flash Earth and Ordnance Survey imagery. The circular feature may just be an optical peculiarity, or a vegetation feature. It certainly warrants further investigation. Might it be a crannóg - a lake dwelling, of which there are 1,200 known examples in Ireland? I have brought this feature to the attention of an archaeologist, who will hopefully be able to ascertain whether this might be a newly discovered archaeological monument. Of course, there's always the possibility that it's nothing . . . but we will wait and see.

The search for Amergin and Drogheda's Stone Age past

Drogheda Museum / Old Drogheda Society
Special HERITAGE WEEK lecture

Is Millmount really a passage-tomb? 

THE SEARCH FOR AMHAIRGIN – Looking deep into Millmount’s past …

By Kevin Barton & Conor Brady
THURS 22 AUG 2013 – 8pm
Governor’s House, Millmount Cultural Quarter

Using the latest geophys technology Drogheda Museum begin a year-long project to look deep into the ancient mound at Millmount in a search for Drogheda’s Stone Age …

It is thought that the mound at Millmount in Drogheda was originally part of the great Megalithic (“large stone”) Culture which flourished in the Boyne Valley from 5,000BCE to 2,000BCE and includes the internationally-famous tombs of Newgrange and Knowth. Its importance in our collective folk memory is underlined by the legend that the mythological figure Amhairgin (pronounced “Aver-gin”) the originator of song and poetry is buried there.

Because of the huge amount of structural changes on the mound over the millennia normal archaeological excavation is impossible but now through the wonders of modern electronic remote sensing (“geophys”) we can scan deep into Millmount and begin to unlock its secrets.

Leaders of the Project Team, Kevin Barton of Landscape & Geophysical Services  and Conor Brady, Lecturer in Archaeology at DKIT will launch the research programme with a special lecture in The Governor’s House Millmount on Thursday 22 Aug 2013 at 8pm.

In Early Irish mythology Amhairgin ("aver-gin") was the inventor of song and poetry as implied in his name ("Amhair"=singing; "gin" = give birth to). The extraordinary poem/song associated with him, Duan Amhairgine (The Song of Amhairgin), was therefore regarded by the Old Irish as the first song ever made and was always placed first in collections of poetry.

The power of this poem in Old Irish is such that a whole array of famous poets in many languages have attempted translations. Among them was the great English poet Robert Graves who said that “English poetic education should, really, begin not with Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with the Song of Amergin.”

Many composers and songwriters have also set versions of the text to music including this one in the original Old Irish by Lisa Gerrard (of Dead Can Dance) from the BBC series "The Celts".

First passage-tomb discovered in the Boyne Valley for two centuries using new archaeological techniques

The first passage-tomb to be discovered in the Boyne Valley in 200 years has been identified by archaeologists using sophisticated imaging techniques.

The newly discovered mound, with circular enclosure,
shown on a colour LiDAR image. Reference: Boyne Valley
Landscapes Project. Data: Meath County Council/
Discovery Programme

Archaeological imaging and geophysics specialist Kevin Barton spoke about the discovery, made originally in 2010, at a recent Heritage Week presentation at the JFK Arboretum in County Wexford. He was giving a talk about possible new monuments discovered in LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) imaging of the Great Island area of Wexford.

The “new” passage-tomb, on the floodplain of the Boyne southwest of Newgrange, had showed up as a “blip” on LiDAR imagery of the valley, Mr. Barton said. Because of its situation in proximity to the Boyne monuments, it was considered that the feature warranted further investigation.

The newly discovered monument shown in gradiometry with
resistance overlay. The dark linear feature running from SSW-NNE
is believed to be a passage. The small dark circular area is the
mound. The outer enclosure is also faintly visible. © Davis et al

The site was given the designation “LP2” by investigating archaeologists. In the LiDAR image it appeared there was a central mound with a circular outer enclosure feature. The enclosure was “faint but identifiable” in the image.

Further work, in the form of ground-probing techniques called Magnetic Gradiometry and Resistivity was carried out, and revealed what appeared to be a weakly defined outer enclosure in addition to a distinct passage/chamber arrangement of the passage-tomb aligned towards the north-northeast.

Archaeologists became excited about the central mound, which they said “appears to show a clear passage and chamber arrangement with splayed terminals at the NNE. The central mound is clearly identifiable and measures c. 30m in diameter. This strongly suggests that the feature represents a hitherto unknown passage tomb.”

Kevin Barton demonstrating archaeological surveying
techniques at the JFK Arboretum. © Anthony Murphy.

Kevin Barton told the audience at his Co. Wexford talk that he believed it was the first passage-tomb to be discovered in the Brú na Bóinne complex in over 200 years. What makes the discovery very special is the fact that no archaeological digging took place to find it. It was discovered purely through LiDAR imaging and ground-probing techniques.

The area where the passage-tomb is located is close to the Boyne, straddling a modern hedgerow. The land has been under tillage and pasture at various times, and has probably been considerably ploughed over the years.

Commenting on the discovery, Anthony Murphy, author of Newgrange: Monument to Immortality said that it was just one of a number of exciting new features identified over the past few years in the Boyne Valley.

“This is incredible work by archaeologists using an array of new techniques. They have found a passage-tomb that has been hidden in the landscape for millennia, and they have found it without putting a single trowel into the ground.”

This is a wider LiDAR image of the Boyne Valley. The location of the new
monument is shown by the red circle. Map: Boyne Valley 
Landscapes Project. Source of data: Meath County Council/Discovery Project.

“I am particularly excited by the suggestion that the passage of this newly-discovered monument may point towards the north-northwest. If that’s the case, there are two possibilities which I’d like to see examined. One is that the passage points back up the slopes of the valley towards Newgrange. The second is that, because it points to the north-northwest, it cannot be aligned on a sunrise or moonrise, and one could propose a stellar alignment," Mr. Murphy said.

“It’s obviously far too early to say whether that’s the case. But I would definitely be interested in finding out whether there might have been an alignment to Deneb, the bright star of Cygnus, the swan constellation. The Brú na Bóinne area is linked with significant swan mythology. Indeed the owner of Newgrange, Aonghus Óg, was said to have taken the form of a swan. And the fields where this newly discovered mound is located have been the wintering ground for the whooper swans, which have been coming to Newgrange in large numbers for many decades, and possibly since the time Newgrange was built.”

But this newly-discovered monument might never be excavated. Kevin Barton said in his talk that archaeological digging is not only invasive, but destructive.

The new electronic arsenal employed by archaeologists is, however, providing the means to look under the soil without ever having to dig. And Mr. Barton said the equipment and the analysis of data were improving all the time. The new breakthrough is a testament to the exciting prospects of discovery in future of monuments that are currently hidden from view in the landscape.

Some of these new techniques have been employed at the Hill of Slane, where a mound, also surrounded by a circular enclosure, is thought by some to have originally been a passage-tomb, possibly as old as Newgrange, which was later re-fashioned by the Normans into a defensive motte.

Some new techniques will also be employed to examine the possibility that Millmount, in Drogheda, is also an ancient passage-tomb which was re-used by the Normans and later by the British who fortified the mound with a martello tower on top.

Acknowledgements: Steve Davis, Conor Brady, Kevin Barton and Will Megarry (archaeology); funded by the Heritage Council (INSTAR); Meath County Council (LiDAR imagery); the archaeologists are very grateful to the Redhouse family for access to the land.

Boyne Valley Landscapes Project: Steve Davis, William Megarry. Conor Brady, Helen Lewis, Thomas Cummins, Loreto Guinan, Jonathan Turner, Colman Gallagher, Tony Brown and Robert Meehan.

See Boyne Valley Landscapes Project Phase III Summary Report and Phase III Final Report.