Iron Age Ireland

How much of Iron Age Ireland is myth, and how much is archaeological reality? At the monumental Hill of Tara, sacred kings ruled over a landscape steeped in ancient ritual and ancestral memory. Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. John Waddell, author of The Celtic World, to explore the truth to be found through the mist and beneath the hills. We hear about legendary rulers like Queen Medb, epic cattle raids, massive ceremonial feasts, and lawless, roaming war bands. MORE Iron Age Britain Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/iron-age-britain/id1520403988?i=1000769068093 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/4pfQPibNe3XvQMXFDIvDar Origins of the Celts Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/origins-of-the-celts/id1520403988?i=1000659027926 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Bxy0X7ZJOx5t1Ko4xwEmy Presented by Tristan Hughes. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Want even MORE Ancients? Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, PLUS ad-free, early access podcasts AND exclusive subscriber-only Ancients episodes. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Tudorberg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Hannah Burner from Giggly Squad and the holidays are around the corner, which means I'm officially entering my Hostess Hannah era with Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. You guys know I love cats and fostering, but when I'm hosting, I do not want my house smelling like cats. I want people focusing on my hosting skills. That's why I love Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. It delivers long-lasting odor control and forms compact clumps that make cleanup easy. So that's one less thing I need to worry about when people come over. Be guest-ready with Arm & Hammer Cat Litter. Find it now at Walmart or Amazon.

• 1:21Tristan Hughes?

  Welcome to The Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And today we journey to Iron Age Ireland, exploring monumental royal sites like the Hill of Tara and Rathcroghan, these great centres of Ireland some 2,000 years ago. Now, the story of Iron Age Ireland is steeped in mythology. It was at Tara that King Leary MacNeil reportedly challenged Saint Patrick, defending his ancient pagan sovereignty. At Rathcroghan, the formidable Queen Maeve launched her legendary cattle raid. While at Navan, King Crahor Macnessa ruled Ulster through warrior codes and divine decree.

• 2:01Tristan Hughes?

  Yet, while surviving mythology paints a vivid picture of these rulers and their kingdoms, it reflects medieval tradition as much as Iron Age reality. And behind the legends lie a fundamental debate, the question of how, or even if, Ireland became Celtic. Join us as we interrogate the myths and unpack the archaeology of Iron Age Ireland with our guest, Dr John Waddell, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Galway.

• 2:37Tristan Hughes?

  John, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  I'm delighted to be here. Thank you, Tristan.

• 2:42Tristan Hughes?

  And to give us an overview of Iron Age Ireland and some of its greatest sites. Irish prehistory, John, with the Stone Age, with the Neolithic, you've got great monuments like Newgrange, Brunaboynia. Bronze Age, you've got the massive hill forts. Does the Iron Age of Ireland, does it feel a bit more obscure?

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Yes, it does. And for many people, it is perhaps the, but it has been the most obscure of the various periods of Irish prehistory. Part of the reason, I think, is that the population in later prehistory had the unfortunate habit of cremating themselves, if that's the right way to put it. And unlike many other parts of Europe where people were sometimes buried with great pomp and ceremony, and indeed with marvellous grave goods. When you cremate and bury, you do tend to destroy a lot of useful archaeological evidence. And I blame the practice of cremation. Park of the dirt of evidence in Iron Age Ireland. Because if you leave aside the absence of burials that do tell us so much in archaeology, there is some very fine metalwork and other monuments, of course.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  So in that respect, the Iron Age is a rich period. It's complicated, of course, because many people use the term Celtic Iron Age to describe it. And this adds yet another dimension to its difficult story. Because this distinguishes it from, if you like, the previous Bronze Age and the previous Stone Age. People apply almost an ethnic label to the Iron Age. And of course, the Celtic question is one I know we'll be talking about at length, but it just complicates the Iron Age picture as well.

• 4:13Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, we'll certainly explore that question of the Celts and in Iron Age Ireland. But no such thing as a silly question. First of all, John, when we're talking about Iron Age Ireland, what length of time roughly should we be thinking?

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Just to stay with round figures, I mean, let us say 500 B.C. before Christ to about 500 A.D. after Christ, with the appearance of Christianity and literacy. In other words, the last few prehistoric centuries undoubtedly Iron Age. In fact, the use of iron probably began tentatively around 800 B.C., but it's only in the later centuries B.C. that we have lots of evidence for iron usage. These labels, you know, Neolithic, Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age are very loose ones. In the past, when various archaeologists tried to write about prehistory in Britain and Ireland, one or two attempted to get rid of these labels,

• 5:12Speaker 02

  but they have become so entrenched in both the academic and in the popular mind, there is no avoiding them. But they are just very loose and imprecise labels for broad time periods.

• 5:24Tristan Hughes?

  I guess also because, I mean, here in England, we've done an episode recently on Iron Age Britain. And then, of course, we finished that almost with the Roman invasion and then the period of Roman Britain. But I guess in Ireland, I mean, there isn't that cut off fibre, is there? I mean, there's interaction with the Romans. But of course, traditions from the Iron Age continue much more clearly in Ireland for many centuries following, let's say, the first century A.D.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  You're absolutely right. That is true. The Romans in Britain did sort of cause some problems for the indigenous population, who, by the way, were Celtic-speaking, but we will come back to that thorny question later on. But we were spared, if you like, any Roman incursions of any major size. But as the work has progressed in recent decades, it's become very clear that there were very close connections between Ireland and Roman Britain. And eventually, of course, the advent of a Christian church with literacy, the written word, definitely brought prehistory to an end. But again, this wasn't an immediate overturning of old events. As is always the case, the interface between these so-called periods,

• 6:32Speaker 02

  prehistory and history are, if you like, somewhat tenuous. You know, it was a long drawn out process.

• 6:39Tristan Hughes?

  Can you give us a sense, John, of the geographic layout of Ireland in the Iron Age? What should we be thinking topographically before we explore the stories of the people themselves? The island of Ireland back then, geographically, what should we be thinking about?

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, the first thing that springs to mind, of course, is that like Britain, Ireland was and is an island, which always suggests to people, if you like, a degree of separateness from the rest of the world. But in fact, in recent years, people have become more and more aware of the fact that water, sea ways connected people in the past rather than dividing them. In fact, if you think hard about it, certainly in prehistory, both in Britain and in Ireland, sometimes travel by land was far, far more difficult than travel by sea and by river. So coastal routeways and river routeways were probably the prime means of connectivity, both in Britain and Ireland, throughout much of prehistory.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  We know now, of course, that the Romans built very straight roads. But, you know, until that happened, travel by waterways of one sort or another was probably immensely important. Now, that also means, of course, that we have probably underestimated the degree of connectivity between peoples, both in Britain and in Ireland in prehistoric times. And the English Channel, for example, was undoubtedly a major factor in connecting England to the continent. And the Irish Sea was a connecting force as well in its own right. Now, people didn't sort of cross these waters in wintertime. They had a common sense prevailed and they probably had certain seasons for sailing, you know.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  But I mean, nonetheless, I suppose many of us have had rough ferry crossings that have sort of put us off the notion of prehistoric travel by water. But our prehistoric ancestors had a better, well, were more attuned, if you like, to the seasons. So they would have travelled in good weather for obvious reasons. What I'm basically saying is that we've underestimated the degree of connectivity between islands. And that applies to Britain and Ireland.

• 8:47Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, and by, let's say, 500 B.C., you know, that round date for the beginning of Iron Age Ireland, you know, people have been going to and from Ireland in their dugout canoes, in their boats for, well, for millennia before that time, right, John?

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And I mean, we know very, very well in this country that Hide-built boats, the so-called curries that you see still in the west of Ireland, were widespread in the past. And in fact, there's one rather interesting 17th century illustration of a very large curragh or hide-built boat that must have been a small sailing craft with a large sail. So you could sometimes have rather large sailing craft made of animal hides as well. So again, while the evidence for sailing in prehistory in both Britain and Ireland is there, and plank-built boats and hide-built craft were well-known, we still don't know

• 9:42Speaker 02

  an awful lot about the mechanisms involved in the transport of people and goods in prehistory, but it was certainly very, very significant. And we've underestimated it, as I've said.

• 9:52Tristan Hughes?

  And John, is it also the case then that although, you know, it is a bit more invisible, a bit more obscure, the archaeology from the Iron Age, the evidence we have for settlements, as we'll get into, the main settlements, is there a regularly recurring theme that they are near, as you mentioned, they are very close to river systems, or they're very close to the coastline, i.e. very close to places that lots of people could reach them?

• 10:15Speaker 02

  That is actually a very interesting question, because if you think about it, actually, the famous sites in Irish Iron Age, the Irish Iron Age, like Tara

• 10:24Tristan Hughes?

  Tara, yes.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  and the Rathcruthen in the west of Ireland, and Navan Fort or Awan Macha in the north, are not obviously situated on major routeways. All of them in different ways were located on high ground in important locations that probably were of some sanctity from at least the Neolithic. So if you like, these places were important places with deep archaeological roots, both chronologically and magically and religiously. So their location-wise was probably rather little to do with rivers and sea ways. Other factors came into play here. Tara, as we know now,

• 11:06Speaker 02

  was an immensely important site before 3000 B.C. or thereabouts, because it too was an important burial place in the Neolithic. So its story is quite a remarkable one. It can be traced over all those thousands of years until medieval times, when it was still a place of assembly and ritual. And that represents, you know, 4,000 years plus of ceremonial activity, which is rather a remarkable time span when you think about it.

• 11:37Tristan Hughes?

  Well, as you say, very interesting, if those kind of major centres are actually further away from those routeways, from those connecting systems, do we think the more, you know, usually more invisible parts of Iron Age society, the everyday settlements that maybe their footprint on the landscape today is more invisible, should we be expecting them? Should we be picturing that most of them would have been alongside rivers and places, you know, with good access to fresh water, good access to places where you can grow your crops, graze your animals and so on?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. But they are obviously more difficult to unearth, archaeologically speaking, because they'd never had the same monumental quality with burial mounds and other earthworks that places like Tara possessed in the past. People tended to live in very modest accommodation in Irish prehistory. That's what indeed was the case in much of Britain too, whereas they devoted an awful lot of energy to building great monuments, be they hillforts or burial mounds. So the dead very often got more attention than the living. And this is, I suppose, an important indication of how significant ritual was in the lives of prehistoric peoples.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  At Tara, you have a sequence of burials that must have reminded visitors for centuries of the presence of ancestors. So the ancestral places, I think, were probably one of the key elements in an awful lot of activity in prehistoric times. And this is probably the case in Britain too. I mean, today, the term hillfort is often used of many of the great monuments in Britain, but I think people are becoming a little more attuned to the possibility that in addition to being sites with great defences, perhaps they weren't as military as was sometimes thought,

• 13:33Speaker 02

  that these were assembly places too. Now, I'm not trying to compare English hillforts with Tara, but I think there are sites, and there are hillforts in Britain, that probably had a major ritual dimension to them. And this isn't always easily apparent. It's more visible on the Irish scene, I think, for various reasons, partly because places like Tara have a very rich mythology associated with them, all recorded in medieval Irish literature. This complicates the story for Irish archaeologists, because you can't ignore the myth and legend. And it is, you know, pretty significant. And this sort of myth and legend does not survive to the same extent elsewhere in

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Europe, in Britain or indeed in continental Europe. We can blame the Celts for this, and I know we will get there.

• 14:22Tristan Hughes?

  Well, I mean, I'm very glad you mentioned that, John, because we have done an episode recently on Iron Age Britain, and you probably are aware of that amazing discovery in northern England of the Melzumby Hoard recently in Yorkshire. You know, that deposit found near one of those great late Iron Age centres in Britain, the Opperder of Stannic, which is maybe not a hillfort, but once again, that evidence of ritual is there. But you did mention mythology and the stories that have been preserved. How important is mythology for archaeologists like yourself and others wanting to learn more about the Iron Age and what life was potentially like, the use of certain sites and so on?

• 15:04Speaker 02

  It's very tricky ground, as you can well imagine. I mean, for many people, the very word myth just means fanciful nonsense, inventive stories. But in fact, ancient myths were, if you like, the way ancient peoples described the world, they had a deep meaning. Now, they're preserved in fragments in medieval Welsh and Irish literature. It's a huge source of intriguing references to rituals and other things in past times. Now, obviously, it's a source that has to be analysed with great care. But to take one example, for instance, if you read up the various stories in medieval Irish literature about the kings of Tara, it becomes very evident

• 15:47Speaker 02

  that they were sacred kings. They were examples of sacred kingship. And sacred kingship is something that is known, you know, in various societies around the world. These were kings who were not, if you like, political potentates. Their fundamental role was to maintain cosmic order. And if, for example, a sacred king wasn't able to produce good harvests, he would be deposed. And there are various instances in the medieval stories of sacred kings who failed to do what sacred kings should do, maintaining the order of the cosmos, and they were deposed. Another feature of sacred kingship was unblemished physical nature. Once a sacred king was blemished

• 16:30Speaker 02

  or wounded or deformed in any way, they were deposed. And this is a ritual that one might eventually trace in archaeology in Britain and Ireland. It suggests at least that in Celtic times, in pre-Roman times, some tribal rulers had a sacral quality. Now, that's not going too far, I think, because when you look at various burials of wealthy Celtic chieftains on the continent, for example, some of them are very strange indeed. There's one or two examples that one could cite. There's a very famous statue of a warrior from the Glawburg in Germany. And if anybody was a sacred king, this individual was. But anyway, difficulty in

• 17:14Speaker 02

  proving it, I suppose. But I think the mythology alerts us in many ways to the strangeness of the past. We more often than not tend to look at the past, obviously to 21st century eyes, but the past was very different in some respects. And I think when it comes to things like sacred kingship and rituals associated with kingship, the mythology in the Irish sources alerts us to this.

• 17:42Tristan Hughes?

  John, can it also be helpful, I guess, you know, kind of those kernels of truth, the historical basis for some of these myths that are passed down from generation to generation? If I use like a comparison, many of us will think of like famous myths, like the Trojan War, the Iliad, the Odyssey. And this idea, okay, we don't have any archaeological evidence for a king called Agamemnon, who was the king of kings, but we know that in the age it's set, that the place that he ruled from, Mycenae, was actually a very important place. Is there any similarity, like, let's say, certain Irish myths mention a king from Tara, who supposedly ruled at the time of the Iron Age? No evidence for that particular king living, but archaeologically, we do know that Tara was an important centre back then, things like that?

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yes. No, I mean, one of the problems here, of course, is that Tara is associated with kingship again and again and again. And there are many burial mounds there. Apart from excavation of one that turned out to be a Neolithic passage tomb, or earlier than anything anybody ever anticipated on Tara, excavation have not taken place of any likely sites that might reveal a few scraps about royal burials. And of course, when we come, I mentioned the problem of cremation earlier on. I think if you started digging some of the burial mounds at Tara, you would find lots of traces of burned burials. But if these were kings, the kingly evidence probably went up in smoke with an awful lot else, you know. The archaeological evidence may be there, but I

• 19:08Speaker 02

  wouldn't be certain. But the traditions are certainly there. It's a place associated with royalty since time immemorial. And that's why, in fact, the term royal site is used of places like Tara and Awan Macha, the Navan Fort, and indeed Rathcruthen. It's because they are associated in myth and legend with kings and queens. And it's, if you like, the mythical dimension has given them this royal designation. It may be a bit misleading. It would probably be better to call them great assembly places, because they weren't simply frequented, I think, by the upper echelons of society, but they were places where people came together for all sorts

• 19:48Speaker 02

  of ritual purposes. And the excavations at Navan Fort near Armagh have shown that, going right back into the Bronze Age, this was an important place of assembly. The animal bones from some of the wooden structures there, for example, were found, when, you know, careful analysis was done, to be from animals that came from perhaps as far away as the west of Ireland. That means that some of the animals that were eaten at Awan Macha in great feasts came from far away. Now, if you think about it, I don't think they were bought in a local butcher's shop and imported that way. They probably were brought by people to Navan for the festivities.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  So, you know, a great feast at Navan, if you think about it, might well have involved the bringing of animals and, of course, people travelled too, from various locations in the north and west of Ireland for a particular occasion there. And this would have meant that a great feast was probably preceded almost by a pilgrimage and the whole rituals associated with the feast. And those few animal bones were much more complicated than we ever imagined. Navan was a place that people came to possibly in great numbers on some occasions, hence the importance of assembly in prehistory.

• 21:08Tristan Hughes?

  The assemblies, absolutely. Well, we'll delve into the archaeology of those sites. But you did hint earlier, John, and as promised, we want to explore this question of the Celts and this idea of Celtic. So can you explain what is this idea we have today of the Celts arriving in Ireland during this period? What is this idea?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  This was the traditional notion that the knowledge of iron was brought to the island of Ireland by Celtic-speaking peoples around about 500 B.C. And it was a very neat, simple explanation for a new technology. Now, we know, of course, that this was not the case, as is always, the real story, as far as we can tell, is much more complicated. I wrote this book, The Celtic World, to try and bring together the story of language and archaeology, because the best definition of an ancient Celt is somebody who spoke a Celtic language. Now, in the past, all sorts of other definitions have been used, ethnic, racial, and so forth. But the very simple notion that a Celt was somebody who

• 22:14Speaker 02

  spoke Celtic actually helps us to explain a lot, at least to a certain degree. And if you think about it, there is incontrovertible evidence that Ireland was a Celtic-speaking country in prehistoric times, just as Britain was, for the most part, a Celtic-speaking island in pre-Roman times. So, we can be reasonably sure that Ireland was Celtic-speaking probably by about 500 B.C. There are some sort of historical evidence in names of places for that. But I think archaeology is going to eventually demonstrate that the process of becoming Celtic-speaking was something that began earlier in prehistoric times,

• 22:54Speaker 02

  possibly in the later Bronze Age around 1,000 B.C. Because if you look at the Irish evidence, there's pretty little evidence for incomers, for inward migration in either the Iron Age or the preceding later Bronze Age. But what you do have around 1,000 B.C. in particular, in both Britain and in Ireland, enormous evidence archaeologically for trade and exchange. And it's very clear that from around 1,000 B.C. in particular, the sea ways that we already mentioned, and the great rivers of Europe, the Thames, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Seine, the Rhine. These were great rootways. The Danube literally connected Central Europe

• 23:35Speaker 02

  with Eastern Europe. And these were great rootways for, well, we would call trade and exchange, but when you remember it, trade and exchange means people. And people were travelling along with their myths and legends and languages as well. So there was, I think, archaeology suggests a ferment of connectivity in the later Bronze Age. And that is the time, I think, when the Celtic languages, the Celtic language develops and people begin to speak a common language. Linguistic scholars actually suggest that the evidence we have from inscriptions in Spain and in France and elsewhere, suggest that in the pre-Roman

• 24:14Speaker 02

  times, that the Celtic languages were probably mutually intelligible, so to speak. There's a great difference now between Welsh, for example, and Scots-Gallic, and indeed, modern Irish. In fact, they're virtually unintelligible one to the other. They are very different. But this, some scholars would argue, was not the case in pre-Roman times, that there was a greater degree of similarity between the Celtic languages. And this would have been a unifying factor, and it would have meant that stories and myths, along with trade and exchange, were an important part of the human story in France, in Germany, in Britain, and in Ireland in these exciting centuries. And that's when, if you like, the Celts begin to emerge slowly onto the scene of archaeology and history eventually.

• 24:59Tristan Hughes?

  So this is what archaeology is saying. It's not this idea of, just to say, one big migration of people arriving at one time. This is more likely, it's this island becoming Celtic, becoming Celtic-speaking largely, dominantly, happens over centuries, and it's because of the trade and connections across the Irish Sea. And almost this idea of traders going up the rivers or visiting those great centres of the late Bronze Age, so before the, you know, because Ireland's Bronze Age is the time of hillfalls, isn't it? When you're in Britain, you think Iron Age, hillfall, but in Ireland, it's the Bronze Age, so people going there, yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Strange difference here that still remains reasonably unexplained. But we mustn't rule out the possibility of the mobility of people as well, because genetic studies are now beginning to revolutionise our understanding of prehistory. And this is one of the most exciting things to have happened in archaeology, in both continental Europe and in Britain and in Ireland. There are now just a handful of studies that are beginning to show that people were moving from place to place significantly. And this will certainly become clearer in the years to come. So the story will be not just trade and exchange important, or be where they were, but certainly a story of the movement of peoples as well. But not huge groups, but nonetheless significant groups from one place in Europe to another.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  And that will become, I think, an exciting part of the story in years to come.

• 26:28Tristan Hughes?

  Hi there. Just before we return to the episode, I wanted to pop in here to tell you about the History Hit subscription and give you a taste of the exclusive content that our subscribers get. Now, as a History Hit subscriber, you have access to hundreds of brand new documentaries with a new release every week. From Dan Snow exploring Maya ruins, to my documentary on Petra and the Nabateans. There's an app where you can search for any time period, people, or presenter. There is something for everyone. You also get, as part of the subscription, early access to all of our podcasts with no ads. And on the ancients, where we really do value our listeners, so we also release every

• 27:09Tristan Hughes?

  two weeks, an exclusive subscriber-only episode. Our most recent instalment was with the bestselling author, Robert Harris, dissecting the history that inspired several of his novels, from papal conclaves to the late Roman Republic. And like most of us ancient history nerds, well, Robert, he thinks about the Roman Empire almost daily. Here he is explaining why. Given that you've now done quite a few novels on ancient Rome and the Roman Republic, how often do you think about the Roman Empire?

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Well, it's sort of part of my profession. So obviously, I do tend to think about it. I would think more than most people. They were an immensely disciplined, creative, fighting city-state, and no one could cope with them. And the empire was a mighty one, and in a way, it never entirely went away. I mean, one of the things I felt when I wrote Conclave was that this is the Roman Empire. It survived in this arc of the Vatican, and there is the pontifex maximus, and they have a cherea, and it's all male, and, you know, so much of it is just a survival of the Roman era.

• 28:28Tristan Hughes?

  To hear more about the history behind Robert's books, from Pompeii to the Dreyfus Affair, and to listen to the rest of the episode, sign up to History Hit. There are subscriber episodes every fortnight and access to hundreds of original documentaries. That's historyhit.com/subscribe or click the link in the show notes. That's historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Hannah Burner from Giggly Squad, and the holidays are around the corner, which means I'm officially entering my Hostess Hannah era with Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. You guys know I love cats and fostering, but when I'm hosting, I do not want my house smelling like cats. I want people focusing on my hosting skills. That's why I love Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. It delivers long-lasting odour control and forms compact clumps that make clean-up easy, so that's one less thing I need to worry about when people come over. Be guest-ready with Arm & Hammer Cat Litter. Find it now at Walmart or Amazon.

• 29:26Tristan Hughes?

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• 29:56Tristan Hughes?

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• 30:14Tristan Hughes?

  But let's go to another of your, you know, your big topics and one we must cover when talking about Iron Age Ireland, which is delving more into the archaeology itself of the Hill of Tara. So, John, if someone visits the Hill of Tara today and sees the remains, like sees the earthworks and so on, what would you see? I mean, what, what can you see on the ground and kind of what different periods of history are we thinking of?

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Well, when you go to the Hill of Tara today, there is a small interpretive centre that offers an explanation. And if you make sure you are well acquainted with the story as presented there, it will make some sense. Many people who go to the Hill of Tara just immediately head straight to the highest point, and that is a large burial mound called the Mound of the Hostages. Now, the Mound of the Hostages gets its name from a medieval story, supposedly a place for hostages or burial or something like that. But that doesn't concern us. It's the highest point on the hill. And if you climb through its summit or even stand close by, you have magnificent views over the central plain of Ireland, the flat lands to the north and west. But that's a distraction in a sense. Now, the

• 31:23Speaker 02

  high ground was important, as I think I probably mentioned, for many of these places. But that particular mound is a Neolithic passage tomb, built long before the long, complicated story develops on the Hill of Tara. Some years ago, a colleague of mine here in Galway, Conor Newman, took a look at another earthwork on that hill called the Banqueting Hall. And this is a very long pair of parallel earthen banks. It's on the northern side of that famous hill. Most people don't even see it today, even though it's quite prominent. But if you go to the so-called Banqueting Hall and stand within the banks, you'll realise that your views of the outside world are obscured because the banks, even in their

• 32:07Speaker 02

  degraded form, are still quite high. It's a long processional route way from the northern end of the hill to the centre of the summit of the Hill of Tara. And Newman suggested that this was a processional way that was used as rituals to take the royal visitors on a royal inauguration route to the summit of the hill itself. And it has, the Banqueting Hall, it never was a banqueting hall. It's far too big to be even, you know, a hall of any description. It has puzzling gaps in its banks that allow the visitor to look left and right to the outside world. And the theory promoted then was that it was

• 32:49Speaker 02

  a processional way that allowed the royal procession to move to the sacred centre of the hill, getting views of the various burial mounds and other monuments to left and to right. And these would have reminded a person to be inducted into, you know, like sacrilegious kingship of the ancestors of the past stories of previous incumbents on the sacred hill. And rather like the Roman Appian Way, lined by funery monuments, here you had a processional way, it has been suggested, that was a great sacred route into the hill and to the centre

• 33:31Speaker 02

  for inaugurations. It's just a good reminder that there were stories here attached to the monuments that we now have completely lost. There are dozens and dozens of burial mounds on the hill, many of them now barely visible to the naked eye. And they too, in their day, must have held ancestral memories, again, all now lost. And in fact, a number of years ago, a geophysical survey on the hill produced a huge, well, traces of a huge circular timber structure, four or five times the size of Stonehenge. And that would have

• 34:10Speaker 02

  stood prominently, like Stonehenge, on the hill around probably about 2000 B.C. There's no trace of it today, though you will in aerial photographs see faint traces of the circle. It's a reminder too, that, you know, huge timber circles, that probably predating Stonehenge, were a feature of the landscapes in both Britain and in Ireland. And certainly this was the case on Tara. And it's a further indication of the ritual importance of the place as an assembly place in the past. And because it was so important, I think people wanted to be buried there, generation after generation. And an interesting detail when it comes to the burial mounds is they, they very often intersect, as if you wanted to,

• 34:51Speaker 02

  you placed your burial mound partly over an older burial mound, as if you wanted to connect with ancestral remains, both to legitimise your presence there and then perhaps to convey a story. The myths we have of Tara now are only the faintest scraps of the stories that must have been associated with a place like that. Ancestral memories ran deep on that hill, as they did at other sites, you know, of the same sort in the country.

• 35:20Tristan Hughes?

  So we should think with the importance of Tara, a place like Tara back in the, back in the Iron Age for people, I guess probably as well, John, you can tell me if I'm wrong here, maybe for the, the higher ranking people, the higher up people in these Iron Age settlements, is the fact that it, to them, it's already an ancient landscape, it's already ancient history, it's got burial mounds that they can see, and so they want to align themselves with those people, as you say, be buried there, have certain rituals there, where they have all the community come to the top of the hill as well to do their feasting or, you know, ritual deposits and similar things like that?

• 35:55Speaker 02

  It wouldn't be too far fetched to try and draw a comparison with, say, Westminster Abbey, for example, where they, the great were buried with pomp and ceremony, and whose, you know, memories are still enshrined in various ways in inscriptions and in monuments there. Now, the monuments in Westminster Abbey speak to the public because they are written very often and are inscribed. Sadly, we don't have any inscriptions on the Tara monuments, so that's the mystery. But if you like, the, the notion was still the same, trying to sort of present and preserve a historical story and to remember the past in different ways.

• 36:36Tristan Hughes?

  Do we have any idea, I know the archaeology, there isn't too much, but from excavations there or elsewhere, just how magnetic a place like the Hill of Tara could have been, people? As in, how far and wide people could have ventured to Tara from elsewhere in Ireland? Or indeed from beyond, from across the RSE? Do we have any idea about that?

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Well, I think it was a magnetic place. Again, to draw another analogy, I wouldn't say necessarily Westminster Abbey is the best parallel. But imagine comparing, say, Tara to the Vatican today. The Vatican is famous because it has a 2000 year old history almost, and it is the burial place of a very important saint, St Peter. And it was this and its subsequent history that over centuries drew people to it for religious reasons. And in a sense, I think to draw an analogy like that makes some sense when trying to describe a place like Tara. It had a magnetic quality because going there, well, possibly like

• 37:36Speaker 02

  the Hajj, maybe in fact it helped you to, well, improved your chances in the next life to some extent. But I mean, it's also suggested, of course, that assemblies in prehistory, both in Ireland and elsewhere, had other more mundane roles as well. In a sense, they probably had a religious focus, but they possibly also were occasions for, you know, trade and exchange and indeed other more joyful activities of one sort or another. But I think the religious dimension may well have been a significant one. And this brings us back in fact to sort of some British monuments like Stenoch. They too probably had a religious dimension to them that is now very difficult to uncover, you know?

• 38:18Tristan Hughes?

  Well, I mean, I also think of the other kind of big opidum that you think of, which is Colchester and Camulodunum, which we know, first off, with the, the ditches, it's not like a hillfort, they're not completely like circular, they're kind of, they're guiding traffic, and they guide the people past tombs like the Lexington burial. And there's this Gosbecks, the site where you have like a late Iron Age sanctuary as well there, and then lots of open space. So in many ways, it sounds kind of similar to the Hill of Tara in what it could be.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  That's an excellent point. And I should have made it myself, but you're dead right. I mean, there are similarities. Once you start looking for them, people were engrossed in ritual in prehistory. It was like the moving force behind daily life. In fact, daily life in prehistory was, you know, the ritual and if you like, the sacred and the buffane were not, if you like, separated as they are today. Ritual permeated daily life. And while assemblies were probably the high point of certain activities, there would have been much more on a daily basis that was ritual as well. And Camulodunum is a very good example of that. Yep.

• 39:25Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. I'm glad that could be of help. And John, even though the archaeology at Tara, I mean, no evidence surviving of actually kings being there in the Iron Age, but we've got to delve into at least one of these stories. Are there any great legends of kings from Ireland who supposedly reigned and had a lot of power in the Iron Age?

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Well, there is one king that had probably deserves mention because he's now almost completely forgotten. This is the king associated with Rathcrahan in the west of Ireland. This is Dhaigh, and he was famous in medieval times because people began to invent things about Dhaigh. And as far as we know, much of his story is actually medieval invention. He was said to have actually gone to the continent and indulged in a military foray, possibly into Switzerland, to the foot of the Alps. And this was a story that actually captured popular attention, particularly in the 19th century, because for some people it was an example or an instance of Ireland's military prowess abroad. Now, Dhaigh was

• 40:27Speaker 02

  the last pagan king of Ireland, as I said, I think, but he probably just engaged in the occasional raid into Britain. He never ventured into Switzerland. There was never an Irish invasion of Switzerland. And

• 40:41Speaker 02

  According to the story, his bones were brought, his body was, he was killed by a flash of lightning at the foot of the Alps and then brought back to Ireland. He was supposedly buried in Rathcrawhan, but this appears to be simply invention. As I said, no invasions of Switzerland, not an example of Ireland's military prowess, but he was famous in song and story in the 19th century until he was eventually acceded by the rise of the even better warrior, Cúthulain. So that story is a brilliant one, but one that eventually means he was forgotten sadly.

• 41:15Tristan Hughes?

  It's a great story, John, and that teases up nicely to then go to this next place on my list, and I apologize if I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of it. Rathcrawhan in Roscommon?

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Yes, Rathcrawhan in Roscommon. Again, it's a royal site, so called because it figures, well, kings and queens figure prominently in its story. And it's famous because one of the great tales in medieval Irish literature is the Thaoin bo Cúilna, the cattle raid of Cúil.

• 41:45Tristan Hughes?

  The Irish Iliad.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Well, indeed, it's a great story of a great cattle raid and a great conflict between Queen Maeve in Rathcrawhan and her Ulster counterparts. And the great warrior Cúthulain figures prominently in the story. It is an epic tale, but there's also very extraordinary mythological elements in it as well, because the core of a tale is a great mythic battle between two bulls. The story starts because in fact, Queen Maeve is jealous and wants a bull to match her husband's bull, and she tries to get it by various means, fair and foul.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  And but anyway, at the end of the story, after much bloodshed and warfare, the bulls engage in a great battle and one of them eventually is the winner before racing off and eventually dying himself. But these are mythic elements in a very complicated tale that has, I think, layer after layer in it, going back into prehistoric times. It was certainly embellished in medieval times, so it's a complicated narrative, but it has brought, if you like, great fame to Rathcrawhan in the west of Ireland and Queen Maeve. Despite all the academic disagreements about her nature, is now a firm sort of figure associated with this.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  And she's often presented as a formidable female warrior, even though I think at heart she is a mythic invention, you know, but we can never be sure.

• 43:19Tristan Hughes?

  But in regards to the archaeology from Rathcrawhan, is it, is it like, do we think, do you think, do archaeologists think that the purpose of this great centre was quite similar to Tara? Is the archaeology pretty similar as well? Are we talking about just another type of Tara, but in the west of Ireland?

• 43:37Speaker 02

  To a degree, yes. There are quite a few burial mounds in the complex at Rathcrawhan, along with various medieval enclosures. So it was a site that was obviously used into the medieval period as well. But the burial mounds, some of them are certainly Iron Age in date, and some may even be older. But there's also a very large focal monument that is a huge mound, about 80 metres in diameter. And while it's never been excavated, it has been geophysically surveyed. And the geophysical survey there many years ago produced evidence of all sorts of internal structures. So there are similarities between the great mound at Rathcrawhan and the mound at Navan Fort, which was excavated.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  And excavation at Navan did produce traces of a great circular wooden temple predated by a series of great round houses and evidence for feasting. So it's possible, even though we can't be certain, that the great mound that is the centrepiece of Rathcrawhan was a monument in some ways similar to the great mound at Navan, which dates from around, oh, well, 100 B.C. or thereabouts in its heyday, I suppose. So there are similarities, but of course there are differences as well. But again, just like Navan and Tara, Rathcrawhan has this great weight of mythology attached to it that both adds to the picture and obviously complicates it for archaeologists as well.

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• 46:12Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's move away from those royal sites now, because I appreciate time is limited, but a larger theme that we get from the Iron Age generally in Britain, but also in Ireland, and this idea of conflict, of warfare, not with external powers, but between different centres. Do we get any sense of that in the Iron Age, John? Do we get a sense that the people who were living near somewhere near, say, like Rathcrawhan,

• 46:53Tristan Hughes?

  would be fighting against those, let's say, at Tara and, let's say, you know, capturing people as slaves and so on and so forth?

• 47:01Speaker 02

  Warfare was probably endemic, but not warfare as we know it today, thankfully. Communal fights of one sort or another were probably a means of expressing both territorial prowess and your own sort of communal strength. And it was probably engaged in by a minority of males. And the Iron Age evidence in Ireland is relatively slim because the swords that survived are all very small and are not very impressive weapons. But if you go back in time to the Bronze Age, when there are large numbers of weapons, shields and spears surviving, it's very clear that certainly in the later Bronze Age, Ireland

• 47:43Speaker 02

  was participating, just like Britain, in a very sort of martial society. Warfare and warriors loom very prominently in the archaeological record in the later Bronze Age in particular. They are less prominent in the Iron Age, but nonetheless, they are there. And I think that there was probably across much of Europe, a military caste that was both, you know, powerful and warlike. The evidence suggests that they have, well, they loom large in the archaeological record, almost to the exclusion of the bulk of the population, who probably didn't quite have

• 48:25Speaker 02

  the same, if you like, warlike mentality. We're looking at a warrior elite, and that's a feature of both the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Britain and Ireland. And we get focused on these elites because they are obviously fascinating to see and have produced marvelous bronzes and decorated metalwork. But the bulk of the population was not elite. They were the farmers and the fishermen, and they were probably the stalwarts of a society that allowed its elites to actually go up and engage in spasmodic combat from time to time.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  And there's an interesting element here that probably is worth noting. Some of the medieval Irish tales tell of the Fionn. These are the warriors of a heroic Finn Macool, and there are many tales of their fighting and feasting and elopements. And I mention this in the Celtic world, because actually, the stories of the Fionn, for the most part, seem to be medieval inventions.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  The original Fionn was a war band and there are traces of it both in France and elsewhere in pre-Roman times. The original Fionn, and it's certainly sort of mentioned by very early Irish writers in medieval times, were groups of landless young men who were allowed to roam in a lawless fashion, engaging in pevery, robbery, occasional murder, perhaps sexual violence from time to time. And they were allowed, rather like juvenile delinquents, to wander the countryside until they reached maturity and became, if you like, members of the community.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  It's an inter-European society and its roots can be found in various parts of Europe, traces of it can be found in various parts of Europe. The Fionn were war bands, allowed to roam freely, and that's something we don't always associate with Celtic society. And yet, it does seem to have been the case. The Galates in France, for example, were probably Fionn war band types. And I think it's something we're rather uncomfortable with, that there were notions of juvenile delinquents tolerated in prehistory for a number of years before they got sense. And yet, the evidence there in medieval Ireland suggests that this was the case.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  They are mentioned by early Christian writers with a certain amount of disgust and annoyance because they were obviously disproved of, but they were an aspect of society that raises all sorts of very intriguing questions about the nature of warfare, I suppose, and brigandage in pre-Roman times.

• 51:19Tristan Hughes?

  And we think, yeah, so Iron Age Ireland, you know, there could have been these bands of brigands, as you say, which is, that's very interesting.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:26Tristan Hughes?

  Yes. And of course, also kind of harking back to that, the Irish Idiots, the cattle raid story, of course, you know, so cattle rustling is a thing, so that's also very interesting.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  Important. It was a way of sort of proving yourself and the strength of your, you know, political prowess, I suppose. Yes. And this may be the case elsewhere as well.

• 51:45Tristan Hughes?

  So, John, I wish I could ask so much, but I mean, we're very grateful to have, you know, just an hour of your time. We could talk about so many other aspects of Iron Age Ireland. We haven't even talked about bog bodies, but we'll save that for another time, Connaught and Man, and so on and so forth. But the story of Iron Age Ireland and everyday Celtic-speaking peoples as those centuries go on, are their lives actually still very invisible? Or can we look to a place like Britain and can we imagine, you know, that they're all farmers, they live in round houses, you know, they're in smallish communities, but they're making a living, very much agrarian societies? Can we still get glimpses into what everyday life would have been like for an everyday

• 52:29Tristan Hughes?

  Iron Age person in Ireland?

• 52:31Speaker 02

  In Ireland, it's rather difficult because excavations of Iron Age settlements are few and far between. You have a much richer archaeological story in Britain to delve into, and excavations at numerous sites have demonstrated, if you like, the richness of the evidence for, you know, ordinary settlement and domestic activities. The evidence in Ireland has been and is harder to come by, but I'm recently convinced that there were not huge differences in the two societies. People lived in small houses, they were farming communities. In Ireland, certainly cattle raising and crop growing was important, the same was

• 53:12Speaker 02

  true in Britain, and on one level, there were certain similarities. And of course, as we've said before, there were differences.

• 53:21Tristan Hughes?

  John, this has been fantastic. If listeners could remember only one thing from our chat, of course, they'll remember much more, but if they did, what should we take away about Iron Age Ireland today? What do you really want to get across about the realities of Ireland back in the Iron Age?

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's Celticity, if that's the right word to use. This brings me back to the book, The Celtic World, because when people shared a language, they shared much more. And archaeology has prompted us, I think, to look at the differences in material culture between Ireland and Britain and the continent. But many things were shared, including an extraordinary Celtic art style. So I think it behoves us to look at the similarities occasionally and to remember that these were people who shared stories and indeed shared a language.

• 54:10Tristan Hughes?

  John, this has been absolutely fantastic. Last but certainly not least, your book, your most recent book is called?

• 54:16Speaker 02

  The Celtic World: A History. I should really have called it, actually, The Discovery of the Celtic World, an attempt to show how the Celtic world was discovered by linguists and archaeologists, but maybe a subtitle sometime in the future.

• 54:29Tristan Hughes?

  Well, and also, if anyone wants to delve into the archaeology of all of prehistoric Ireland, you've written a series of editions, a textbook, The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland. I have a copy in front of me as well, very useful when we did prehistoric Ireland documentary a few years ago, so I'll also shout out that work too. And John, you are a legend in the story in the field of Irish archaeology. It just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  I'm glad you didn't call me a myth. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tristan.

• 55:01Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Dr John Waddell talking all things Iron Age Ireland. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Now, while we've explored the archaeology of sites like Tara and Rathcrochen, there is still so much more to Iron Age Ireland's story, and so we will have to do future episodes on the ancients all about it. We'll have to take a closer look at the stunning, intricate Latin art style that swept across Ireland during the Iron Age. And we'll also have to delve deep into individual epic myths, like the cattle raid of Queen Maeve, the so-called Irish Idiots. So stay tuned for those. We'll have to cover them in future episodes. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Ancients.

• 55:46Tristan Hughes?

  Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and will be doing us a big favour. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. And don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.