Iron Age Ireland

in prehistoric island, or what made Alexander truly great.

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Welcome to the ancients, I'm Tristan Hughes your host. And today we journey to Iron Age Island, exploring monumental royal sites like the Hill

of Tara and Rathcron, these great centres of Ireland some 2000 years ago.

Now the story of Iron Age Island is steeped in mythology, which was at Tara that King

“Leary McNeil reported the challenge Saint Patrick defending his ancient pagan sovereignty.”

At Rathcron, the formidable queen may have launched her legendary catarate. While it's navin, King Khrahor 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.

As behind the legends, lie a fundamental debate, a question of how, or even if, Ireland became chaotic. Join us as we interrogate the myths and unpack the archaeology of Iron Age Island with our guest, Dr. John Wardell, a meritist professor of archaeology at the University of Gaway.

And to 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 New Grange, Bruno Boinier, Bronze Age, you've got the massive hillfots.

“Does the Iron Age of Ireland feel a bit more obscure?”

Yes, it does, and for many people it is top steam, 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, as that's the right way to push it. And unlike many other parts of Europe, people were sometimes buried with great pumping

ceremony, and indeed with marvelous grave goods. When you cremate a barrier, you tend to destroy a lot of useful archaeological evidence, and I blame the practice of cremation, a part of the death 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 metal work in 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. But this adds to us 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 what I know we'll be talking about at length, but it just complicates the Iron Age picture as well. Yes, we've certainly explored that question of the Celtic and in Iron Age Ireland, but notice

things the city question first of all is John, when we're talking about Iron Age Ireland,

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 that Christianity and literacy. In other words, the last few prehistoric centuries on doubtedly Iron Age. In fact, the use of Iron probably began tentatively around 800 BC, but soaring 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.

Ireland, one or two attempted to get rid of these labels, but they have become so entrenched

“in both the academic and the popular mind.”

There is no avoiding them, but they are just very loose and precise labels for broad time periods. I guess also because here in England, we've done an episode recently on Iron Age Britain and then of course we finish that almost with the Roman invasion and then the period of Roman Britain.

But I guess in Ireland, there isn't that cut off. 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 that, say, the first

century AD. You're absolutely right. That is true. The Romans in Britain did sort of call some problems for the indigenous population who, by the way, were Celtic speaking, but we were come back to that early question later on.

But we were spared if you're 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 a 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 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? The island of Ireland back then geographically, what should we be thinking about? Well, I mean, the first thing this speaks to mind, of course, is that like Britain, Ireland was an island, which always suggests the people, if you're like a degree of separateness from the rest of the world. But in fact, in recent years, people had become more and more

aware of the fact that what are seaways connected people in the past rather than dividing them. In fact, if you think hard about this, 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, then to have much of prehistory. We know now, of course,

that the Romans built very straight roads. But, you know, until that happened and 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 winter time. They had a common sense prevailed, and they probably had certain seasons for sailing,

you know. But, I mean, nonetheless, I'm suppose many of us had rough, fairly crossings that have sort of put us off the notion of prehistoric travel by water, but prehistoric ancestors had a better well, more tuned if you're like to the season. So they would have travelled in good weather

for obvious reasons. But, I'm basically saying is that we've underestimated the degree of connectivity

between islands and that applies to Britain and New York. Yes, and by, let's say, 500 BC, you know, that round date for the beginning of our New Zealand, you know, people have been going to and from Ireland in the dugout canoes in their boats for, for millennia before that time, right, John? Absolutely. And I mean, we know not very, very well in this country that hide-billed boats, the so-called curcs that you see still in the west of Ireland, where widespread

in the past. And in fact, there's one rather interesting 70th century illustration of a very large curc, our hide-billed 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 book Britain and Ireland is there and plank-billed boats and a hide-billed craft were well known. We still don't know 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 said. 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

could reach them. That is actually a very interesting question because if you'll think about it,

“actually the famous sites in Iron Age, the Iron Age, like Tara, Tara, you have to read,”

and the Wrath Crohn in the West of Ireland, and Northern Ireland, and Northern Ireland in the North, are not obviously situations on major routeways. All of them in different ways, they're 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 archaeologic roots, both chronologically and magically and religiously. So their location

wise was probably rather little to do with rivers and seaways. Other factors came into play here. Tara, as we know now, was an immensely important site before 3,000 BC of there about, because it too was an important burial place in the Neolithic. So it's story, it's 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. 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 our niche 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, you know, with good access to fresh water, good access to places where you can grow your crops and grays your animals and so on? Yeah, 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 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 devotion to the”

north enough of energy to build in great monuments, p.day, hill forts are burial amounts. So the dead very often got more attention than the living. And this is I suppose at 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 and 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 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 it 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 iris 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 them with an legend. And it is pretty significant. And this sort of myth and legend does not survive to the same extent elsewhere in Europe in written or indeed in continental Europe. We can blame the kels for this. And I'm very glad you mentioned that,

John, because we have done that so recently on our niche, Britain, and you probably are aware of that amazing discovery in Northern England, of the Meals and Beahord recently in Yorkshire. You know, that deposit found near one of those great later Irish centres in Britain, the opiterestanic, which is maybe not a hill fort, but everyone's getting that evidence of ritual is there. And 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? It's very tricky ground as you can imagine. I mean, for many people, the very word myth just

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 analyzed 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 Torah, it becomes very evident that they were sacred kings. They were examples of saccharon kingship and saccharon kingship is something that is known,

you know, in various societies around the world. These were kings who were not of your political potence tastes. Their fundamental role was to maintain cosmic order. And

if, for example, a sacred king wasn't able to produce good harvest, 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 saccharon kingship was on blemished, physical, physical nature. Once a sacred king was blemished or wounded or deformed in any way that they were deposed. And this is a ritual that one might have actually traced in archaeology in Britain and Ireland. It suggests, at least, that in Celtic times,

in pre-Roman times, some tribal rulers had a saccharon quality. Now, that's not going too far,

“I think, because when you look at various burials of wealthy Celtic chiefs in some of the”

continent, for example, some of them are very strange indeed. There was one or two examples

that one could cite. There's a very famous statue of a warrior from the Glouberg in Germany. 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 off 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 I'd come to things like saccharon 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, God of 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 of, like, famous myths, like the Trojan or 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 said that the

“place that he ruled from, my senior, was actually a very important place. Is there any similar”

authority 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. Yes, no, I mean, one of the problems here, of course, is that by Tara is associated with kingship again and again and again. And there are many burial amounts there, apart from an excavation of wonder turned out to be a

neolithic passage tomb or earlier than anything anybody ever anticipated on Tara. Excavation have not taken place at any likely sites that might reveal a few scraps about royal burials. And, of course, we've only got, I mentioned the problem of cremation earlier on. I think if you're starting digging some of the burial amounts of Tara, you would find lots of traces of burned burials. But if these were kings, the kingly evidence probably went up and smoke with an awful lot of

evidence, you know. The archaeological evidence is maybe there, but I wouldn't be certain. But the traditions are certainly there. It's a place as sociase, it was royalty since time

“immemorial. And that's why, in fact, the term royal site is used to places like Tara and”

avant-Marca, the Navernthord and Indie, Rathchrohan. It's because they are a sociase that 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 better to call them greater assembly places because they weren't simply acquainted, I think, by the upper echelons of society. But they were places where people came to the other for all sorts of ritual purposes.

And to the excavations that Navernthord near Armah have shown that going right back into the bronze age, this was an important place of assembly. The animal bones, some of some of the wooden structures there, for example, you know, were found when, you know, careful analysis was done to be from animals like came from, perhaps as far away as the west of Ireland. That means that some of the animals

I don't think they were bought in a local butcher shop and imported that way. They probably were brought

by people to Navern for the festivities. So, you know, a great feast at Navern, if you think about it, might well have involved the bringing of animals and, of course, people traveled to from various locations in the north and west of Ireland, as far as 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. Daven 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, we'll delve into the archaeology of those sites, but you did interlead John, and as promised, we want to explore this question of the counts and this idea of Celtic. So, can you explain what is this idea we have today of the counts arriving in Ireland during this period? What is this

idea? This was the traditional notion that the knowledge of Ireland was brought to the island of Ireland by Celtic speaking peoples around 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 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 to ethnic racial and so forth, but a very simple notion that a Celt was somebody who is spoke Celtic actually helps us to explain a lot at least to a certain degree. And if you think about

it, there is in controversial evidence that Ireland was a Celtic speaking country in prehistoric times, just as Britain was full of 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 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, possibly in the later Bronze Age around 1000 BC. Because if you look at the Irish evidence, there's pretty little evidence for in-comers, for inward migration, in either the Iron Age of 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 1000 BC in particular, the seaways that we already mentioned, and the great rivers of Europe, the Thames, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Sun, the Rwar. These were great routeways. The Danube initially collected central Europe with Eastern Europe, and these were great routeways for, well, what we would call trade and exchange, which when you 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”

affirmative 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, France, and elsewhere, suggests 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 Scotts Gallic, and indeed modern Irish. In fact, they're virtually one intelligible, one to the other. They are very different. But this some scholars would argue it was not the case in Cree, 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 Celus begin to emerge slowly onto the scene of archaeology and history, eventually. 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 what 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

those great centres of the late Bronze Age. So before you know, because Ireland's Bronze Age is

“the time of hill force isn't it? When you're in Britain, you think I need to be helpful. But in”

Ireland, it's the Bronze Age. So people going there. Yeah, 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 revolutionize our understanding of prehistory. And this is sort of the most exciting things to have happened in archaeology in both continent, Europe and in Britain and in Ireland. But 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 to the record be where they were, but certainly a story of them to move into people as well. But not huge groups, but not the less significant groups from one place in Europe to another. And that will

“become, I think, an exciting part of the story in years. Hi there. Just before we return to the episode,”

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Well, let's get to another of your big topics, and one we must have a went on with our

So John, if someone visits the Hill of Tara today and sees the remains, like sees the

“artworks and so on, what would you see? What can you see on the ground and what different”

periods of history are we thinking of? Well, when you go through 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 the place for hostages were buried or something like that, sponsored like

those concerns. It's the highest point on the Hill, and if you climb through it so much or 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, you know, the high ground was important

“to them, as I think I probably mentioned, for many of these places, but that particular mound”

is a neolithic passage to built long before the long complicated story develops on the Hill of Tara. Some years ago, a colleague of mine here in Gaul, a Connor Newman, took a look at another earthwork on that hill called the Bankriting Hall, and this is a very long pair of parallel earth and 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-precessioner root way from the northern end of the Hill to the center of the summit of the Hill of Tara, and a Newman suggested that this was a precessional way that was used as rituals to take the royal visitors on a royal inauguration

root to the summit of the Hill itself. And it has the Bankriting Hall, it never bossed Bankriting

Hall. It's often been to be even a hall of any description. It has puzzling gaps in its banks that allowed the visitor to look left and right to the outside world. And the theory promoted then was that it was a precessional 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 shenite sacred kingship

of the ancestors of the past stories of previous incumbents on the sacred Hill. And rather like the Roman apian way, lined by funerary monuments, here you had a precessional way, it has been suggested. That was a great sacred root 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

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, 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 you know, huge timber circles in that probably predating stonehenge, or 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 and port, so the place as an assembly place

“in the past. And because it was so important, I think people wanted to be very there,”

generation after generation. And an interesting detail when it comes to the burial mounds is they very often intersect. As if you wanted to, you placed your burial mound, partly over a nolder burial mound, as if you wanted to connect with ancestral remains, both 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, and ancestral memories ran deep on that Hill. And as they did as other sites, you know, of the same store in the country. So we should think with the importance of

John, you can tell me from here. Maybe for the the higher ranking people, the higher up people

“in these Iron Age assessments, is the fact that it to them, it's already an ancient landscape,”

it's already ancient history, it's got very amounts 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. 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 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're like the notion was still the same, trying to sort of present and preserve 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 be people, as in

how far and wide people could have ventured to Tara from elsewhere in Ireland or indeed from

“beyond from across the Irish Sea, 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 I imagine comparing, you 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 Saint Peter, and it was this and it's 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 to hatch, 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 and prehistory both in Ireland and elsewhere had other Mormon-dane roles as well. In a sense, they probably had a religious focus, but they possibly also were 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. And this brings us 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. You know, well, I also think of the other kind of big

opitum that you think of, which is Cochester, and Camillusonum, which we know, the first of

with the ditches, it's not like a hill for them, not completely like circular. They're kind of they're guiding traffic, and they guide the people past tombs like the lexton burial. And there's this gocephics, the site where you have like an a late-on-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 I could say. Yes, an excellent point. And I should have made it myself, but you're dead-wise. I mean,

there are similarities once you start looking for them. People were engrossed in ritual in pre-history. It was like the moving force behind daily life. And in fact, daily life in pre-history was you know, the ritual, and if you like the sacred and the profane, where not if you're like separated as they are today, ritual permeated daily life, and then by the assemblies we're probably the high point of certain activities, there would have been much more on a daily basis that was

ritual as well. And Kamala Dunamis have a very good example of that. Yeah, there you go. I could be of help. And John, even though the archaeology at Tara, I know evidence of diving of actually Kings being there in the Iron Age, but we got to delve into at least one of these stories. Are there any great legends of Kings from Ireland who supposedly rained and had a lot of power in the Iron Age? Well, there is one king that had probably deserved as mentioned

because he's now almost completely forgotten. This king associated with Rothkron, in the West of Ireland. This is Dahi, and he was famous in medieval time, because he could be going 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 an military farer 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 of an instance of Ireland's military

just engaged in the occasional raid into Britain. He never ventured into Switzerland. There was

“never an Irish invasion of Switzerland. And according to the story, his bones were brought”

his body 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 some kind of story in the 19th century until he was eventually occluded by the rise of the even better warrior cool heaven. So Dahi's story is a brilliant one, but one that eventually means he

was forgotten sadly. It's a great story, John, and that he's as obnoxiously to then go to this next place on my list, and I apologise if I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of it. Rathkronin in Rothkronin? Yes, Rathkronin in Rothkronin. Again, it's a royal side so called,

“because it figures about kings and queens figure prominently in its story. And his famous,”

because one of the great tales in Medieval Irish literature is that Tain Bo Coolna, the catalrade of Cooli. The Irish idiot. Well, indeed, it's a great story of a great catalrade, and a great conflict between Queen Maeve in Rathkron, and her ulster counterparts, and the great warrior Coolian 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 boos. The story starts because, in fact, Queen Maeve is jealous and wants a bool to match her husband's bool, 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 booros 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, um, if you're like, great fame to Rathkron and 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. 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 Rathkron, and is it like, do we think, do you think, do archaeologists 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? Do we agree, yes? There are quite a few burial mounds in the complex of Rathkron, 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 our age in date, and some may even be older. But there's also a very large focal monument that is a huge mound about 18 meters

in diameter. And while it's never been excavated, it has been geophysicly 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 of Rathkron and the mound of Navern fort, which was excavators, an excavation at Navern did produce traces of a great circular wooden temple, predated by a series of great roundhouses and evidence for feasting. So it's possible, even though we can't be certain, that the great mound that is the centerpiece of Rathkron

was a monument in some ways similar to the great mound of Navern, which dates from around a hundred BC or thereabouts in its hayday, I suppose. So there are similarities, but of course, there are differences as well. But again, we just like Navern, Antara, Rathkron has this great weight of mythology attached to it. That puts ads to the picture, and obviously complicates the frog's yawing as well. "Boo, you know what, Kotsenash was? I have a mobile phone

and my whole story is going to be a little bit more." "No, I'm not a big fan of this. " "But a huge dream."

including Euromeen, also in Switzerland." "No, Frank!" "No, Frank!"

“It's a show where we tell you every amazing crazy and important thing that has ever happened”

in human history, from the perilous voyages of the first Polynesians, the discoveries of

Captain Cook, the deadly Viking raids on Britain and Ireland, the rise and fall of the great English kings and queens. We'll tell you how Waterloo was won, the alamo was lost, and all the history in Switzerland. To make sure you check it out, downstose history it for the best true stories ever told, wherever you get your podcasts. "Well, let's move away from those royal sites now, because I appreciate it, 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 are”

living near someone like Ralph Crockin would be fighting against those that say at Tara and

this they, 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 of another were probably a means of expressing both territorial prowess and your own sort of real communal strength, and it was probably engaged in by a minority of males, and the Iron Age evidence in Ireland is relatively stim because the source of survival 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 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, but 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're 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 they have been produced marvellous bronzers 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 warp 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 Fiona. These are the warriors of a heroic in Macool, and there are many tales of their fighting and feasting and alokments. And I mentioned this in the Celtic world, because actually

the stories of the Fiona for the most part seemed to be medieval inventions. The original Fian was a warband. And there are traces of it both in France and elsewhere in Cri-Roman times. The original Fian, and a certain sort of mentioned by very early Irish writers in medieval times, where groups of lambdas, young men, who were allowed to roam in all of those faction engaging in pivry robbery, occasional murder, cups, sexual 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.

Celtic society. And yet it does seem to have been the case, the Galatas in France, for example,

“where probably Fian warband types. And I think it's something we're rather uncomfortable with,”

that there were notions of juvenile delinquents tolerated in Cri history, for a number of years before they got sensed. And yet the evidence there in a 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 way, it's also a very intriguing question, about the nature of warfare, I suppose, and brigandiche, in

pre-Roman times. And we think so, Arnijan, and they could have been the kind of these bands and brigands,

as you say, which is what that's very interesting. Yes. Yes. And of course, it also kind of

harking back to the Irish idiot, the catarate story, of course. You know, so catarusting is the things. That's also very interesting. It's an important, it was a way of sort of proving yourself, and the strength of your, you know, political prowess, I suppose. Yes. And this made the case elsewhere, as well. So John, I wish I could ask so much about, 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

have many me talked about book bodies, but we'll say that for another time, Connie Clevver and Man, and so on and so forth. But the story of Iron Age Ireland, 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 every day life would have been like for an everyday Iron Age person in Ireland? In Ireland, it's 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 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”

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. Join this to be 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 Iron Age Ireland today? What you really want to get across about the realities of Ireland's back in the Iron Age? Well, I think it's kelticity if that's the

right word to use. This brings me back to the book The Celtic World, because when people share the language, they share it much more, and archaeology has prompted us, I think, to look at the the differences in material culture between Ireland and Britain and the continent, but many things were shared, including an extraordinary keltic art style. So I think it be hovers us to look at the

“similarity as occasionally, and to remember that these were people who shared stories,”

and indeed shared a language. John, this may 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 of sometime in the future. Well, and also, if anyone wants to delve into the archaeology of all the prehistoric Ireland, you've written a series

of additions, a textbook, and 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 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're didn't call me a myth. Thank you very much for all. Thank you, Justin.

Well, there you go. There was Dr. John Wudder talking all the things I in Ireland. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Now, while we've explored the archaeology of sites like Tara and Rathcrocken, there is still so much more to I in Ireland's story, and so we all have to do future episodes on the ancients all about it. Well, I have to take a closer look at the stunning intricate Latin art style, that's swept across Ireland during the Irish. And we'll

Irish idiot, so stay tuned for those, we'll have to cover them in future episodes. In the meantime,

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