Iron Age Ireland

The Ancients

This episode of The Ancients explores the Iron Age in Ireland, blending mythology with archaeological evidence to uncover the truth behind legendary

Key takeaways

• Iron Age Ireland (c. 500 BC – 500 AD) is archaeologically obscure due to widespread cremation practices that destroyed much burial evidence.
• Despite the lack of burials, rich metalwork and monumental sites like Tara and Rathcrochan reveal a complex society with strong ritual and political structures.

Main topics

• Iron Age timeline in Ireland (500 BC – 500 AD)
• Archaeological challenges due to cremation practices

Notable quotes

"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."

Conclusion

Iron Age Ireland remains a blend of myth and material reality, where legendary figures like Queen Medb are

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg 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. Welcome to the Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And today we journey to Iron Age Ireland, exploring monumental royal sites like the Hill of Tara and Rathcrochan, these great centres of Ireland some 2,000 years ago. Now, the story of Iron Age Ireland is steeped in mythology. It was at Tara that King Lirri MacNeil reportedly challenged St. Patrick defending his ancient pagan sovereignty. At Rathcrochan, the formidable Queen Maeve launched her legendary cattle raid. While at Navan, King Crahor Mac Nessar ruled Ulster 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 Ireland with our guest, Dr. John Waddell, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Galway. Speaker 3 (2:00) John, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you, Tristan. And to give us an overview of Iron Age Ireland and some of its greatest sites. Irish prehistory, John. With the Stone Age, with the Neolithic, you've got great monuments like Newgrange, Brunaboynia. Bronze Age, you've got the massive hill forts. Does the Iron Age of Ireland, does it feel a bit more obscure? Speaker 4 (2:22) Yes, it does. And for many people, it is perhaps the... Well, it has been. the most obscure of the various periods of Irish prehistory. Part of the reason, I think, is that the population in later prehistory had the unfortunate habit of cremating themselves, if that's the right way to put it. And unlike many other parts of Europe, where people were sometimes buried with great pomp and ceremony, and indeed with marvelous grave goods, when you cremate a burial, you do tend to destroy a lot of useful archaeological evidence. And I blame the practice of cremation. It's a part of the dearth of evidence in Iron Age Ireland. Because if you leave aside the absence of burials that do tell us so much in archaeology, there is some very fine metalwork and other monuments, of course. 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. Speaker 3 (3:37) Yes, we'll certainly explore that question of the Celts and in Iron Age Ireland. But no such thing as a silly question. First of all, John, when we're talking about Iron Age Ireland, what length of time roughly should we be thinking? Speaker 4 (3:50) Just to stay with round figures, I mean, 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. In 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 Speaker 3 (4:47) guess also because, I mean, here in England, we've done an episode recently on Iron Age Britain, and then, of course, we finished that almost with the Roman invasion and then the period of Roman Britain. But I guess in Ireland, I mean, there isn't that cut off either, is there? I mean, there's interaction with the Romans, but of course, traditions from the Iron Age continue much more clearly in Ireland for many centuries following. Speaker 4 (5:10) let's say, the first century AD. You're absolutely right. That is true. The Romans in Britain did sort of cause some problems for the indigenous population, who, by the way, were Celtic speaking. But we will come back to that thorny question later on. But we were spared, if you like, any Roman incursions of any major size. But as the work has progressed in recent decades, it's become very clear that there were very close connections between Ireland and Roman Britain. And eventually, of course, the advent of a Christian church with literacy, the written word, definitely brought prehistory to an end. But again, this wasn't an immediate overturning of old events. As is always the case, the interface between these so-called periods, prehistory and history, are, if you like, somewhat tenuous. You know, it was a long, drawn-out process. Speaker 3 (6:02) 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? Speaker 4 (6:17) Well, I mean, the first thing that springs to mind, of course, is that like Britain, Ireland was and is an island, which always suggests to people, if you like, a degree of separateness from the rest of the world. But in fact, in recent years, people have become more and more aware of the fact that water 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, sometimes travel by land was far, far more difficult than travel by sea and by river. So coastal routeways and river routeways were probably the prime means of connectivity, both in Britain and Ireland, throughout much of prehistory. We know now, of course, that the Romans built very straight roads. But, you know, until that happened, travel by waterways of one sort or another was probably immensely important. Now, that also means, of course, that... They 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 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 ferry crossings that have sort of put us off the notion of prehistoric travel by water. But our prehistoric ancestors had a better, well, they were more attuned, if you like, to the season. So they would have traveled in good weather. for obvious reasons. What I'm basically saying is that we've underestimated the degree of connectivity between islands, and that applies to Britain and to Europe. Speaker 3 (8:10) Yes, and by, let's say, 500 BC, you know, that round date for the beginning of Iron Age Ireland, you know, people have been going to and from Ireland in their dugout canoes, in their boats for millennia before that time, right, John? Speaker 4 (8:23) Absolutely. And I mean, we know very well in this country that hide-built boats, the so-called curracks that you see still in the west of Ireland, were widespread in the past. And in fact, there's one rather interesting 17th century illustration of a very large currack or hide-built boat that must have been a small sailing craft with a large sail. So you could sometimes have rather large sailing craft made of animal hides as well. So again, by the evidence for sailing in prehistory in both Britain and Ireland is there, and plank-built boats and hide-built craft were well known. We still don't know an awful lot about the mechanisms involved in the transport of people and goods in prehistory, but it was certainly very, very significant. And we've underestimated it, as I've said. Speaker 3 (9:16) And John, is it also the case then that, although it is a bit more... invisible, a bit more obscure, the archaeology from the Iron Age. The evidence we have for settlements, as we'll get into the main settlements, is there a regularly recurring theme that they are near, as you mentioned, they are very close to river systems, or they're very close to the coastline, i.e. very close to places that lots of Speaker 4 (9:37) people could reach them? That is actually a very interesting question, because if you think about it, actually, the famous sites in the Iron Age, like Tara, and the Rathcrohan in the west of Ireland and Navanfort or Awanmacha in the north are not obviously situated on major routeways. All of them in different ways were located on high ground in important locations that probably were of some sanctity from at least the Neolithic. So if you like, these places were important places with... deep archaeological roots, both chronologically and magically and religiously. So their location-wise was probably rather little to do with rivers and seaways. Other factors came into play here. Tara, as we know now, was an immensely important site before 3000 BC or thereabouts, because it too was an important burial place in the Neolithic. So its story is quite a remarkable one. It can be traced over all those thousands of years until medieval times when it was still a place of assembly and ritual. And that represents, you know, 4,000 years plus of ceremonial activity, which is rather a remarkable time span when you think about it. Speaker 3 (11:00) 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 nature society, the everyday settlements that maybe their footprint on the landscape today is more invisible? Should we be expecting them? Should we be picturing that most of them would have been alongside rivers and places, you know, with good access to fresh water, good access to places where you can grow your crops, graze your animals and so on? Speaker 4 (11:32) Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. But they are obviously more difficult to unearth, archaeologically speaking, because they never had the same monumental quality with burial mounds and other earthworks that places like Tarra possessed 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 or burial mounds. So the dead very often got more attention than the living. And this is, I suppose, an important indication of how significant ritual was in the lives of prehistoric peoples. 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 was probably the case in Britain too. I mean, today the term hillfort is often used of many of the great monuments in Britain, but I think people are becoming a little more attuned to the possibility that in addition to being sites with great defences, perhaps they weren't as military as sometimes... thought that these were assembly places too. Now, I'm not trying to compare English hill force with Tara, but I think there are sites and there are hill force in Britain that probably had a major ritual dimension to them. And this isn't always easily apparent. It's more visible on the Irish scene, I think, for various reasons, partly because places like Tara have a very rich mythology associated with them, all recorded in medieval Irish literature. This complicates the story for Irish archaeologists because you can't ignore the myth and legend. And it is, you know, pretty significant. And this sort of myth and legend does not survive to the same extent elsewhere in Europe, in Britain or indeed in continental Europe. We can blame the Celts for this. Well, I mean, I'm Speaker 3 (13:47) very glad you mentioned that, John, because it... We have done an episode recently on Iron Age