Iron Age Ireland

0:00Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Chutaburg 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 slash subscribe. Hi, this is Brook to Vard from Naked Beauty. I am always looking for ways to elevate our daily rituals and the colder smart toilet is proof that design changes everything. It's the stunning sculptural piece that feels like quiet luxury for your bathroom. It totally transforms your daily ritual into something elevated with customizable cleansing and touch screen controls. It's functional art that makes your space feel cleaner and more intentional. A modern home deserves a modern toilet.

1:02Experience the difference of colder smart toilets. Find more at Kohler.com. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at my dogs. This episode is sponsored by Smart Travel. A new podcast from Nerdwollit. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach. Smart travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover all things travel finance so you can stop stressing and actually start enjoying your trips. I'm lucky enough to travel a fair bit. You might have heard me talking about being on tour with the ancients in Australia and New Zealand quite recently. Well, Smart Travel podcast from Nerdwollit was a great help.

2:05They dig into which airport lounges are really worth it and which are just an airport gate with better snacks and worse lighting. And what actually happens when an airline loses your luggage for 12 days and how to get real money back instead of a free drink and an apology? Plus the tip I really needed. How to book flights without it turning into a part time job. Travel smarter and spend less with help from Nerdwollit. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get to your podcasts. Welcome to the ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And today we journey to Iron Age Island. Exploring monumental royal sights like the Hill of Tara and Rath Crohn. These great centres of Ireland some 2000 years ago.

3:08Now the story of Iron Age Island is steeped in mythology. It was a Tara that King Liri McNeil reported the challenge St Patrick defending his ancient pagan sovereignty. And Trath Crohn, the formidable Queen Maeve launched her legendary cattle raid. While it's naven, King Croix or Mac Nessa ruled Alster through warrior codes and divine decree. 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 Island with our guest, Dr. John Woodell, emeritus professor of archaeology at the University of Galway. John, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

4:11I'm delighted to be here. Thank you, Tristan. Give us an overview of Iron Age Island and some of its greatest sites. Irish prehistory, John, with the stone age of the Neolithic, you've got great monuments like Newgrain, Shbh, Bronze Age, you've got the massive Hill forts. Does the Iron Age of Ireland feel a bit more obscure? Yes, it does. And for many people, it has touched the, but it has been the most obscure of the various periods of Irish prehistory. Part of the reason I think is that a population in later prehistory had the onphrine and it's fortunate habit of cremating themselves. That's the right way to put it. And unlike many other parts of Europe where people were sometimes buried with great pump and ceremony and indeed with marvelous grave goods, when you cremate a barrier, you do tend to destroy a lot of useful archaeological evidence. And I blame the practice of cremation. So, part of the dirt of evidence in Iron Age Island. Because if you leave aside the absence of barriers that do tell us so much in archaeology,

5:13there is some very fine metal work and other monuments, of course. 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. Yes, we'll certainly explore that question of the Celtsend and in Iron Age Island. But those are things that the City of the First of all John, when we're talking about Iron Age Island, what length of time roughly should we be thinking? Just to stay with round figures, let us say 500 BC before Christ to about 500 AD after Christ with the appearance of Christianity and literacy. In other words, the last few prehistoric centuries on doubtedly Iron Age.

6:18In fact, the use of Iron probably began tentatively around 800 BC, but it's only in the later centuries BC 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, 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. 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, there isn't that cut off either of them. There's interaction with the Romans, but of course traditions from the Iron Age continue much more clearly in Ireland for many centuries following that say the first century AD.

7:19You'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 would come back to that funny question later on. We were spared, if you like, any Roman incursions of any major size, but as the work is 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 always, the case, the interface between these so-called periods, prehistory and history are, if you're like somewhat tenuous, you know, it was a long, drawn out process. 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?

8:20The island of Ireland back then geographically, what should we be thinking about? 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're 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 seaways 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, time is travelled by land, was far, far more difficult than travelled by sea and by river. So coastal routeways and river routeways were probably the prime means of connectivity both in Britain and Ireland, into much of prehistory. We know, 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.

9:22Now 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, but I mean, nonetheless, I suppose many of us have had rough, fairly crossings that have sort of put us off the notion of that prehistoric travel by water, but our prehistoric ancestors had a better, well, they were more attuned if you're like to the season. So they would have travelled in good weather for obvious reasons. But basically, saying is that we've underestimated the degree of connectivity between islands. And that applies to Britain and to... Yes. And by, let's say, 500 BC, you know, that round date for the beginning of our age island, you know, people have been going to and from Ireland in their dugout canoes

10:26in their boats for... Well, for millennia before that time, right, John? Absolutely. And I mean, we know very, very well in this country that had built boats, the so-called crux that you'll see still in the west of Ireland, where widespread in the past. And in fact, there's one rather interesting 17th century illustration of a very large coruch, our 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, by the evidence for sailing in prehistory in Britain and Ireland is there and plank built boats and a hide-built craft were well known, we still don't know enough a 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. And, John, is it also the case then that although it is a bit more invisible, a bit more obscure,

11:30the archaeology from the R&H, the evidence we have for assessments as we'll get into the main assessments. 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? Are you very close to places that lots of people could reach them? That is actually a very interesting question, because if you think about it, actually the famous sites in R&H, R&H, the R&H R&H like Tara, Tara, the need and the wrath of the rest of Ireland and Navon Fort or Auer and Marke 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 routes, both chronologically and magically and religiously. So their location wise, but was probably rather limited to do with rivers and seaways. Other factors came into play

12:34here. Tara, as we know now, was an immensely important site before 3000 BC of 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 4000 years plus of ceremonial activity, which is rather a remarkable time span when you think about it. We actually 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, usually more invisible parts of our Neolithic society, the everyday settlements that may be 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 with good access to fresh water, good access to place where you can grow your crops,

13:39graze your animals and so on. I think you're absolutely right, but they are obviously more difficult to on earth archaeologically speaking, because they'd never had the same monumental quality with burial amounts and other earthworks that places like Tarlup possessed them in the past. People tended to live in very modest accommodation in Irish prehistory. As indeed was the case in much of Britain too, whereas they devoted an awful lot of energy to building great monuments be they hill forts are 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. 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 in Britain too.

14:45I mean today the term hill fort 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 defenses, perhaps they weren't as military as was sometimes thought that these were assembly places too. Now I'm not trying to compare English hill forts with Tara, but I think there are sites and there are hill forts 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 pretty significant. And this myth and legend does not survive to the same extent elsewhere in Europe, in Britain or in the Indian

15:49continent in Europe. We can blame the tells for this. 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 Melzon Behaude recently in Yorkshire. That deposit found near one of those great late Iron Age centres in Britain, the Opedora Stannic, which yes, maybe not a hill fort, but once again that evidence of ritual is there. But you did mention mythology and these 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. 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,

16:51they 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 the various stories in medieval Irish literature about the kings of Tara, it becomes very evident that they were sacred kings. They were examples of sacral kingship. And sacral kingship is something that is known in various societies around the world. These were kings who were not really like political potents' tastes. 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.

17:53Another feature of sacral kingship was unblemished, physical nature. Once a sacred king was blemished or wounded or deformed in any way, then 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 perials of wealthy Celtic chieftains on the continent, for example, some of them are very strange indeed. There are one or two examples of one good sight. There's a very famous statue of a warrior from the Glaubeurg in Germany. And if anybody was a sacred king, this individual was, but anyway, difficulty improving it, I suppose. But I think the mythology alerts us in many ways to the strangeness of the past. We more often not tend to look

18:56at the past, obviously, the 21st century eyes. But the past was very different in some respects. And I think when it comes to things like sacral kingship and rituals associated with kingship, the mythology in the Irish sources alerts us to this. John, can it also be helpful? I guess, you know, go to those, 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 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, my senior was actually a very important place. Is there any similarity like, let's say, certain Irish myths mentioned a king from Taurah, who's supposedly ruled at the time of the Iron Age? No evidence for that particular king living, but archaeologically, we do know that Taurah was an important centre back then, things like that. Yes. No, I mean, one of the problems here, of course, is that Taurah is associated with kingship,

20:01again and again and again. And there are many burial amounts there. Apart from excavation of one that turned out to be a neolithic passage tomb, or earlier than anything anybody ever anticipated on Taurah, excavation have not taken place at any likely sites that might reveal a few scraps about royal burials. And of course, when we got to, I mentioned the problem of cremation earlier on. I think if you started digging some of the burial amounts at Taurah, you would find lots of traces of burned burials, but if these were kings, the kingly evidence probably went up and smoked with a Norfolk audience, you know. The archaeological evidence may be there, but I 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 at places like Taurah and avant-mākā, the Navin fort, and indeed Raskrohan. 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

21:04this royal designation. It may be a bit misleading, it would probably better to call them greater assembly places, because they weren't simply frequented, I think, by the upper echelons of society, but there were places where people came together for all sorts of ritual purposes. And the excavations at the Navin fort near Arma have shown that going right back into the Bronze Age, this was an important place of assembly. The animal bones, some of the wooden structures there, for example, you 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 Arma in Great Feasts came from far away. Now, if you think about it, I don't think they were bought in a local butcher shop and imported that way. They probably were brought by people to Navin for the festivities. So, you know, a great feast at Navin, if you think about it, might well

22:05have involved the bringing of animals, and of course, people traveled to from various locations in the north and west of Ireland, for a particular occasion there. And this was, it 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. Navin was the place that people came to possibly in great numbers on some occasions, hence the importance of assembly and prehistory. The assembly is absolutely well well, we'll dive 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? This was the traditional notion that the knowledge of iron was brought to the island of Ireland by Celtic speaking peoples

23:08around about 500 BC, and it was a very neat simple explanation for a new technology. Now we know, of course, that this was not the case, as as 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, also some other definitions have been used, ethnic, racial, and so forth, but a very simple notion that a Celt was somebody who 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 BC. There

24:11are some sort of historic 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, possibly in the later Bronze Age around 1000 BC. 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 1000 BC in particular, in both Britain and in Ireland, enormous evidence archaeologically for trade and exchange. And it's very clear that from around the 1000 BC in particular, the seaways that we already mentioned, and the great rivers of Europe, the Thames, the Rhine, the Rhond, the Sound, the Rhaar. These were great rootways that Daniel literally collected, central Europe, with Eastern Europe. And these were great rootways for what we would call trade and exchange. But when

25:12you remember it, trade and exchange means people. And people were traveling along with our 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, in France, and elsewhere suggest that in the pre-Roman times, that the Celtic languages were probably mutually intelligible, so to speak. There's a great difference now between Welsh, for example, and Scotscalic and indeed modern Irish. In fact, they're virtually unintelligent, 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,

26:14along 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 Celtic begin to emerge slowly onto the scene of archaeology and history eventually. So this is what archaeology is saying. It's not the idea of just, 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 island, you know, because Ireland's Bronze Age is the time of hillfours, isn't it? When you're in Britain, you think Iron Age of Hillfours, but in Ireland, it's the Bronze Age, so people going there. Yeah. Strange difference here, there's still a remains reasonably unexplained, but we mustn't rule out the possibility of the mobility of people

27:15as 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 continent, Europe and in Britain and in Ireland, but 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 in exchange important, though they will be where they were, but certainly a story of them, the movement of people as well, but not huge groups, but nonetheless significant groups from one place in Europe to another. And that will become, I think, an exciting part of the story in years to come. Hi there, just before we return to the episode, I wanted to pop in here to tell you about the history hits subscription and give you a taste of the exclusive content that our subscribers get. Now, as a history hits subscriber, you have access to hundreds of Brad new documentaries

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29:16so obviously I do tend to think about it. I would think more than, 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 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 Pontifix Maximus, and they have a Curia, and it's all male, and you know, so much of it is just a survival of the Roman era. Hi, this is Brook to Vard from Naked Beauty. I am always looking for ways to elevate our daily

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31:37Help you sleep cool. Shop Temporpedics biggest sale of the year and save up the $700 on select adjustable mattress sets only at Temporpedic.com. Let's go to another of your big topics. One must cover Winter and the Arne Islands, 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, sees the artworks and so on, what would you see? What can you see on the ground and what different periods of history

32:37are we thinking of? When you go to the Hill of Tara today, there is a small interpretive centre that offers an explanation. 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. That is a large burial mound called the Mount of the Hostages. The Mount of the Hostages gets its name from a medieval story, supposedly the place for hostages, where buried or something like that, but it does concern us. It is the highest point on the Hill. If you climb through it, some of us are even stand close by. You have magnificent views over the central plain of Ireland, on the flat lands to the north and west. But that's a distraction in a sense. The high ground was important. As I think I probably mentioned, from many of these places. But that particular mound is a neolithic passage too. Built long before the long complicated story develops on the Hill of Tara. Some years ago,

33:40a colleague of mine here in Galway, Conor Newman, took a look at another earthwork on that hill called the Bankriting Hall. 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 Bankriting Hall and stand within the banks, you'll realize that your views of the outside world are obscured because the banks, even in their degraded form, are still quite high. It's a long, processional routeway from the northern end of the Hill to the center 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 Bankriting Hall. It never was a Bankriting Hall. It's far too big to be even a hall of any description. It has puzzling gaps in its banks that allow the visitor

34:42to look left and right to the outside world. And the theory promoted then was that it was a processional way that allowed the royal procession to move to the sacred center 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 the Sinaic Sacrote Kingship of the ancestors of the past stories of previous incumbents on the sacred Hill. And rather like the Roman Appian Way, lined by funerary monuments, here you had a processional way it has been suggested. That was a great sacred route into the Hill and to the center 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

35:45barely 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, Geophysical Survey on the Hill produced a huge, but traces of a huge circular timber structure four or five times the size of Stonehenge. And that would have stood prominently like Stonehenge on the Hill around probably about 2000 BC. 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 huge timber circles that probably predating Stonehenge were a feature of the landscapes in both Britain and 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

36:47they very often intersect as if you wanted to you placed your burial mound partly over an older burial mound as if you wanted to connect with ancestral remains to legitimize 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 of the same story in the country. So we should think with the importance of Tara, place that 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

37:48where 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. It couldn'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 monument so that's the mystery. But if you're 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. 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

38:53beyond from across the RSC. Do we have any idea about that? 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. 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 the Hajj maybe in fact it helped you to improve 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

39:54were occasions for 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. This brings back in fact to some British monuments like Stenic and they too probably had a religious dimension to them that is now very difficult to uncover. I also think of the other big opidum that you think of which is Cochistar and Kamalusinum which we know first off with the the ditches it's not like a hill for they're not completely like circular they're kind of the guide in traffic and they guide the people past tombs like the Lexington burial and there's this Gospels the site where you have like a late-an-age sanctuary as well there and then lots of open space. So in any ways it sounds kind of similar to the hill of Tara in what it could be. I think that's an excellent point and I should have made it myself but you're okay. Right. I mean there are similarities once you start looking for them people were engrossed in ritual

40:56in prehistory it was like the moving force behind daily life. In fact daily life in prehistory was the ritual and if you like the sacred and the profane were not if you like separated as they are today. Ritual permeated daily life and pile 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 Kamalusinum is a very good example of that yeah. Well there you go Kamalala could be of help. And John even though the archaeology it's Tara a no evidence surviving of actually kings being there in the Iron Age but we got a 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. Well there is one king that he'll probably deserve as mentioned because he's now almost completely forgotten. This is a king associated with Rothkron in the west of Ireland this is Dahi and he was famous in Medieval

41:58time is because he will begin to invent things about Dahi 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 florey 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 Dahi was 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 narration invasion of Switzerland and 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 Rothkron but this appears to be simply invention as I said no invasions of Switzerland and not an example of Ireland's military prowess but he was famous in song and story in the 19th century until he was eventually

43:04occluded by the rise of the even better warrior Kuhalin so Dahi's story is a brilliant one but that eventually means he was forgotten sadly. It's a great story John and that he's as unnysely to then go to this next place on my list and I apologise if I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of it. Rathkron in Rosskommen? Yes Rathkron in Rosskommen again it's a royal site so called because it figures about kings and queens figure prominently in its story and it's famous because one of the great tales in medieval Irish literature is the thine bohkulna the cattle raid of Kuhli. The Irish Iliad? Well indeed it's a great story of a great cattle raid and a great conflict between Queen Maeve in Rathkron and her ulster counterparts and the great warrior Kuhalin figures prominently in the story. It is an epic tale but there's also very

44:05extraordinary mythological elements in it as well because the core of a tale is a great mythic battle between two boos. The story starts because in fact Queen Maeve is jealous and wants a boole to match her husband's boole and she tries to get it by various means fair and foul but anyway at the end of the story after much bloodshed and warfare the boos 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 Rathkron in the west of Ireland and Queen Maeve despite all the academic disagreements about her nature is now a firm sort

45:07of figure associated with this 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. But in regards to the archaeology from Rachrochen is it like do you think do archaeology think that the purpose of this great center 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? To a degree yes there are quite a few burial mounds in the complex at Rathkron along with various medieval enclosures so it was a site that was obviously used into the medieval period as well but the burial mound 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 meters 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

46:09sorts of internal structures so there are similarities between the great mound at Rathkron and the mound at Navin Fort which was excavators and excavation at Navin 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 center piece of Rathkron was a monument in some ways similar to the great mound at Navin which dates from around oh you know a hundred BC are there about synopsis heyday I suppose so there are similarities but of course there are differences as well but again it does like Navin and Tara Rathkron has this great weight of mythology attached to it that both adds to the picture and obviously complicates the archaeologist as well

47:10hi this is Brook to Vard from Naked Beauty I am always looking for ways to elevate our daily rituals and the colder smart toilet is proof that design changes everything it's the stunning sculptural piece that feels like quiet luxury for your bathroom it totally transforms your daily ritual into something elevated with customizable cleansing and touch screen controls it's functional art that makes your space feel cleaner and more intentional a modern home deserves a modern toilet experience the difference of colors smart toilets find more at color.com at Edward Jones we believe rich means opening yourself to new possibilities that's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are helping you move forward with confidence let's find your rich Edward Jones member s ipc

48:18well 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 centers do we get any sense of that in the iron age john do we get a sense that the people who are living near someone let's say like Rathkron 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 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 is probably engaged in by a minority of males and the iron age evidence in Ireland is relatively slim because the swords all survived are all very small and are not very impressive weapons

49:19but 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 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 cast 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 the same if you like warlike mentality we're looking at a warrior elite and that's a feature of both the

50:23Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Britain and Ireland and we get focused on these elites because they are obviously fascinating to see and they've produced marvellous 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 and there's an interesting element here that probably is worth noting some of the medieval Irish tales tell of the fear now these are the the warriors of a heroic fin mccool and there are many tales of their fighting and feasting and allopments and I mentioned this in the Celtic world because actually the stories of the fear now for the most part seem to be medieval inventions the original fear was a warband and

51:32there are traces of it both in France and elsewhere in pre-Roman times the original fian and a certainy sort of mentioned by very early Irish writers in medieval times were groups of lambdas young men who were allowed to roam in a laudous fashion engaging in pivari robbery occasional murder perhaps factual violence from time to time and they were allowed rather like juvenile delinquents to wander this sort of the countryside until they reached maturity and became if you like members of the community 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 fian were warbands 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 fian warband types and I think it's something we're rather

52:38uncomfortable with that there were notions of juvenile delinquents tolerated in pre-history to for a number of years before they got since and and yet the evidence there in medieval Ireland suggests that this was the case 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 also the very intriguing questions about the the nature of warfare I suppose and regendage in pre-Roman times and we think yeah so Arne Jarnand they could have been making of these bands of brigands as you say which is what that's very interesting yes that's and of course it also kind of harking back to that the Yarishi Liad the cattle raid story of course you know so cattle rusting is is a thing so that's also very interesting it was a way of sort of proving yourself in the strength of your you know political prowess I suppose yes and this means that the case elsewhere as well so John I wish I could ask so much but I mean

53:38we're very grateful to have you know just an hour of your time we could talk about so many other aspects of Arne Jarnand we haven't even talked about bog bodies but we'll say that for another time Conny Klavenman and so on and so forth that the story of Arne Jarnand and every day 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 far back their farmers they live in roundhouses you know they're in small-ish 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 ionage person in Ireland in Ireland it is rather difficult because excavations of iron age settlements are few and far between you have a much richer richer archaeological story in Britain to delve into and excavations at numerous sites have demonstrated if you're like the the richness of the evidence for you know ordinary settlement and domestic activities the evidence

54:45in Ireland is 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 catarasing and crop growing was important to the same was true in Britain and on one level there were certain similarities and of course as we've said before there were differences. John this has been fantastic if listeners could remember only one thing from our chat of course they remember much more but if they did what should we take away about ionage island today what do you really want to get across about the realities of islands back in the ionage? 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

55:52I 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. John this has been absolutely fantastic last but certainly not least your book your most recent book is called the Celtic world a history I should really have called it actually the discovery of the Celtic world to show how the Celtic world was discovered by linguists and archaeologists but maybe a subtitle sometime in the future. Well and also if anyone wants to delve into the archaeology of all the prehistoric islands you've written a series of editions a textbook and the prehistoric archaeology of Ireland I have a copy in front of me as well very useful we did prehistoric island documentary a few years ago so I'll also shout out that word 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 I'm glad you didn't call me a myth thank you very much thank you just well there you go there was Dr John Waddle talking all things iron age Ireland I hope you enjoyed the

56:58episode now while we've explored the archaeology of sites like Tara and Rath Crochen there is still so much more to iron age Ireland's story and so we all have to do future episodes on the ancient 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 Castle Raid of Queen Maeve the so-called Irish Iliad 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 please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts that really helps and you'll be doing us a big favor if you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well while 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 so subscribe that's all from me I'll see you in the next episode

58:09hi this is Brooke DeVard from Naked Beauty I am always looking for ways to elevate our daily rituals and the colder smart toilet is proof that design changes everything it's the stunning sculptural piece that feels like quiet luxury for your bathroom it totally transforms your daily ritual into something elevated with customizable cleansing and touch screen controls it's functional art that makes your space feel cleaner and more intentional a modern home deserves a modern toilet experience the difference of colder smart toilets find more at colour.com at Edward Jones we believe rich isn't about having life all figured out it's opening yourself to all the possibilities that's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long-term planning built around you meeting you where you are and helping you get closer to where you want to be so no matter where you're starting from you can move forward with confidence the key to being rich

59:11is knowing what counts let's find your rich at red zones member s i p c