Watery Underworlds—Offerings and Wet Places in the Irish Landscape

As we continue to explore Holy Wells as part of the Festival of Archaeology, we are delighted to have another guest blogger feature in our series. Dr Paddy Gleeson is an archaeologist interested in the later prehistoric and medieval archaeology of Europe and he has written us a blog ‘Watery Underworlds—Offerings and Wet Places in the Irish Landscape’ under the theme of Rivers and Bogs. The symbolic significance of water has a long cultural history in Ireland, and wells and springs, like loughs and rivers, are places which our ancestors saw as entrances to watery underworlds, and Paddy’s blog discusses some resources for exploring our wet places.

Watery Underworlds—Offerings and Wet Places in the Irish Landscape

Dr Paddy Gleeson, QUB

There is a long tradition of deposition in watery places, from the very earliest periods of prehistory, to the present day, that appears related to the spiritual and cosmic significance attached to watery locales. Wells are one element of this, and indeed, the Irish landscape is dotted with such monuments. Many are associated with pilgrimage, or popular saints and feast-days, but few have seen dedicated archaeological investigation. 

The reasons that Ireland’s landscape is dotted with so many wells are perhaps many, but one possibility that has been raised by Dr Niamh Whitfield is that in the early centuries of Christianity, wells were used as places for baptism and perhaps other early Christian rites of passage. Certainly, there is little other evidence for the physical setting of baptism in early medieval Ireland, and the sorts of elaborate baptisteries that one finds on the Continent may perhaps have existed, but have certainly not survived.  

There are many wells mentioned in Christian hagiography that can both be implied to be locations of religious significance, but also landmarks, as for instance, with the well of Ail Find, or well of Clébach, mentioned in very famous episodse in Tírechán’s Collectanea:

‘Then holy Patrick came to the well called Clébach, on the slopes of Cruachu to the east, before sunrise, and they sat beside the well, (2) and, behold, the two daughters of king Loíguire, fair-haired Ethne and red-haired Fedelm, came to the well, as women are wont to do, in the morning to wash, and they found the holy assembly of bishops with Patrick beside the well’

Later, after Patrick relates the mysteries of the Christian God to Ethne and Fedelem, both died and were buried in what is termed a ferta, beside the well of Clébach. Elizabeth O’Brien has studied such ferta and argued that they are ancestral burial places, often re-used ancient monuments, implying that in this case the well of Clébach was part of a larger ritual landscape and geography. Indeed, its location on the east side of Cruachu, which is Rathcroghan, Co. Roscommon, implies that it was located at one of the major ceremonial and ritual landscapes of later prehistoric and medieval Ireland, the traditional seat of the kings of Connaught. 

A number of limited archaeological investigations of wells in Ireland suggest the probability that some were a focus of votive deposits in the later (Roman) Iron Age. In particular work by Eamon P. Kelly of the National Museum of Ireland at St Anne’s well and the well of Tober Doney, respectively in Randlestown and Bellewstown, Co. Meath, have uncovered evidence for long term votive significance. At Tober Doney a 9th-century ringed-pin and a 17th-century fragment of vessel indicate long-term use of the well, but more tantalisingly, excavations at St Anne’s, Randlestown, uncovered a Roman brooch, and sherd of Roman Samian ware pottery of 1st to 2nd century AD date. The recovery of a similarly early (1st to 2nd century AD) bracelet from a well at Pheonixtown, Co. Meath, further suggests a practice of depositing jewellery and other personal items in wells at this point. 

A pattern of deposition at least as old as the Roman Iron Age is evident but what is more certain is a pattern of similar deposition focused on watery places, which is much, much older. There is, for example, well-established evidence for the deposition of metalwork in the Bronze and Iron Ages in river, lakes and other watery places, as well as organic material including figurines, vessels, bog butter and even human bodies deposited in bogs, across Ireland, Britain and elsewhere in Northern Europe. Indeed, the late Roman Iron Age in Scandinavia sees a distinctive period in which war booty, perhaps the proceeds of raids and battles with Roman legions, is deposited in bogs and watery places en masse in southern Scandinavia. 

One of the most spectacular groups of material deposited in such places are the bog bodies, of course, for which Ireland is most famous. There are a number of these, including bog bodies that have only recently come to light. Here again, the work of Eamon P. Kelly and the National Museum of Ireland has been transformative, with the multi-disciplinary study of bog bodies in the Republic of Ireland adding new and very gruesome information to our understanding of these deposits. Specifically, work by Kelly and colleagues has established that people interred in bogs are unlikely to be accidental or ‘normal’ disposal of the dead, but heavily ritualised victims of violence. Many were, in fact, murders, brutally killed and pinned into the bogs, perhaps as punishment. 

In the case of bog bodies like Old Croghan Man and Clonycavan man, it has been suggested that these individuals were gruesomely killed via multiple assaults, included disembowelment, garrotting, having their nipples sliced off, and being ritually ‘pinned’ into the bog through stakes holding down the bodies! Moreover, it has been suggested that many of these bog bodies were intentionally interred in the bogs during the late Bronze Age and Iron Age, on territorial boundaries, and that the properties of the bogs as watery places that prevented conventional decay were intentionally utilised to preserve these people, suspended in a manner, between life and death, and between this world and the afterlife. Kelly, indeed, has argued that these individuals were actually kings; many are tall, well-groomed, and seem to have led elite lifestyles, with, for example, no calluses on hands and manicured fingernails. Possibly, therefore, these are the rulers of society, murdered and punished in this way in order to placate the Gods and as recompense, perhaps, for unjust rule. 

See the Bog Bodies Kingship and Sacrifice Exhibition here: https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Museums/Archaeology/Exhibitions/Kingship-and-Sacrifice

While the bog bodies are perhaps some of the most evocative and gruesome indications of the ways in which votive deposition could be entwined with violence and cosmic concerns, another example, equally gruesome, comes from a human-made island in a lake called Lagore, Co. Meath, not far from the Hill of Tara. Here excavations in the 1930s uncovered a royal crannog of the kings of Co. Meath of the 7th to 10th centuries. The placename, Lagore, comes from Loch Dá Gabhor, and means ‘the lake of the two [white] mares’; it would appear to be very much linked to the name of the valley separating the Hill of Tara and Hill of Slane, further to the north, the Gabhra Valley, and perhaps thus to a myth of a white mare symbolising kingship. Re-analysis of the Lagore archive in recent years has identified that preceding the royal crannog was a small platform in the lake shallows, which was used for the deposition of human remains in the Bronze Age, Iron Age and early medieval period. 

The Iron Age depositions are most interesting, as they consist almost exclusively of female remains, and adolescents, but only the limb bones and skulls of these individuals; their torsos, hands and feet were not part of the material deposited in the lake, indicating that the bodies were most likely disarticulated and dismembered before being interred in the waters. This pattern of deposition recalls the gruesome fate of the bog bodies, but it comes to a close nonetheless at the start of the Christian period. Between the 5th and 8th centuries AD, instead the back of the skulls of mainly robust male individuals were hacked and cut off in equally violent ways, before being brought to the very northeast corner of the platform in the lake shallows, and deposited in the waters. Like the bog bodies, the pieces of skull brought to this location were all that were recovered of the bodies of these victims. This suggests that these people were either killed on the island, this piece of their skull hacked off, and their bodies disposed of elsewhere, or the act of cutting the skull occurred elsewhere, and over c.300 years, these pieces of skull were brought to exactly the same spot, and deposited in the waters. A single find of a piece of vertebrae that shows evidence of hanging by the neck, may suggest that the massacre happened on the island, and that the bodies were disposed of elsewhere, perhaps in the deeper lake waters. Yet, in either scenario, this is a particularly gruesome and violent example of ritual deposition associated with water in early Ireland. To underline that fact, we might consider that the exact piece of skull hacked off, would still have been attached to the brain and spinal column of the individual, with the latter manually removed to separate the piece of skull desired. The significance attached to this practice of deposition was clearly long-lived, and one may wonder to what degree the placename, Lagore, ‘lake of the two white mares’ and its later royal history, is key to understanding the significance of this act. 

Read more about Lagore here: https://www.academia.edu/32090798/Kingship_Violence_and_the_Loch_Da_Gabhor_Royal_Landscape_The_Lagore_Excavations

The deposition of human remains in watery places would appear to have been much more common, and often associated with metalwork, but for a variety of reasons, it is often the metalwork alone that survives. An exceptional example of this from Northern Ireland, is the Loughnashade Horns. Only one of a series of perhaps four recovered in the 19th century survive, but when found in a small lake beside Navan Fort and west of Armagh, these horns were said to be associated with human skulls. The horn that survives can now be seen in the National Museum of Ireland, in Dublin, but it is a unique and extremely important artefact, displaying exquisite La Téne design on its terminal, and dating to the 1st or 2ndcentury AD. The deposition of the horns, perhaps accompanied by human remains at Loughnashade, is undoubtedly related to activity at the immediately adjacent Navan Fort. Navan, as Emain Macha, is the ancient seat of Ulster, and the mythical venue for the tales associated with the Knights of the Red Branch, Conchobhar mac Nessa and Cú Chulainn, in the epic saga Táin Bo Cualinge and other stories of the Ulster Cycle. 

At Navan in Co. Amagh, excavation and survey has uncovered a series of temple buildings and residential structures spanning the early Iron Age and medieval period, that you can read more about in an open access article just published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology. In the context of Loughnashade’s significance as a watery place and locus of votive deposition, it is astounding that activity at Navan was preceded by activity on an adjacent hill to the west, Haughey’s Fort, during the Later Bronze Age. In the same way that Loughnashade formed a votive lake northeast of Navan, a human-made pool was constructed northeast of Haughey’s Fort, called the King’s Stables. Excavation here too has uncovered evidence for the deposition of human remains, animal bodies, and indeed, metalwork and metal-working debris. 

Read about the Loughnashade Horn here: https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/Collection/The-Treasury/Artefact/Loughnashade-Horn/8178d988-064f-4640-8fe1-4171e226955f

Clearly, then, there is a long history associated with deposition in watery places, and perhaps the significance of watery places within cosmic frameworks and belief. Indeed, some of the most spectacular objects ever found in Northern Ireland, have come from just such contexts. Both are hoards, on display in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, and in the Ulster Museum, Belfast. The first, the Lisnacrogher Hoard is a hoard of Iron Age metalwork, consisting of swords and other items of martial significance, found in a boggy area in Co. Antrim. In fact, Lisnacrogher may have been a platform, or shallow island in a lake, not too dissimilar to Lagore, described above. Alas, not enough is known about the findspot to describe the context of deposition in greater detail. Undoubtedly, this was a group of exquisite and significant high-status Iron Age objects, and the possibility that the site was a longer-term focus of elite activity, religious or otherwise, is suggested by a study by Christina Fredengren, highlighting the proximity next to Lisnacorgher, of two other crannogs or human-made islands, Cragiwarren, and Moylarg, where small-scale excavation and limited archaeological investigation has uncovered a range of metalwork from the medieval period. 

Perhaps one of the most exquisite finds from Northern Ireland, also of Iron Age date, is the Broighter Hoard, from Broighter townland on the shores of Lough Foyle in Co. Derry/Londonderry. On display in the National Museum of Ireland this hoard is exclusively Iron Age gold, and includes a model boat, two twisted bar torcs, two necklaces, a beaten bowl and an elaborately decorated buffer torc. The decoration of the torc is truly exceptional, while the model boat was complete with a set of miniature oars and a mast, a find unparalleled in Ireland or Britain at this date. Like the Lisnacrogher Hoard, the beauty of the Broighter Hoard can only really be appreciated from visiting these items and viewing them in the museum, but the proximity of Broighter and the findspot to the shores of Lough Foyle has led Richard Warner to suggest very convincingly, that the Broighter Hoard is a votive offering, deposited as a gift to Iron Age God(s) of the sea. Irish mythology, of course, has its very own God of the Sea, Mánannan mac Lir, and this association is immortalised today with a statue to Mánannan on Binevagh Mountain, overlooking the findspot and Magilligan Point. 

Read more about the Broghter Hoard here: http://irisharchaeology.ie/2012/09/the-broighter-hoard/

Water and watery places have, therefore, long held an important place in the landscape, and spiritual and social imagination. Wells are undoubtedly one element of this, with their myriad associations and roles even today. Yet they form only one element within a broader tradition and geography of votive action stretching deep into prehistory. Deposition in watery places involved some of the finest metalwork to have ever been recovered from Ireland or Britain, but also, sometimes gruesome and macabre rituals of violence and sacrifice, that we have still yet to fully understand. 

You can explore some of the Ulster Museum’s collections here: https://www.nmni.com/collections/history/archaeology/all

Find out more about the context of wells and other watery finds by examining the Northern Ireland Historic Environment Map Viewer here.