An Early Medieval Church Site on the Dingle Peninsula

This weekend, I was lucky enough to visit a few of the Ring of Kerry historical sites with my archaeology class, checking out a few Early Medieval sites on the Dingle coast.

We started off our day visiting the two ringforts of the local king, and could see out onto the island where the Vikings made their base and Church Island, the royally funded ecclesiastic settlement.  These where interesting sites, which you can read all about in the next issue of the Trident

Doesn't this look interesting?  Good thing the Trident is free

After a quick stop for lunch, we drove down to our next site.  Or rather, we drove down to our walk down to our next stop-- first we had to walk over a mile through the winding, muddy dirt path to the site, hopping over some animal dung and fences for good measure.  Apparently the path use to be in much better repair, until the local highway was paved and stole all the traffic.  But I could use some more cardio, so it was probably worth it.

The site we ended up going to was an old church from the Early Medieval period, no longer in a ruinous state.  Unfortunately, it was no longer in ruins not because a good conservation effort, but because those Late Medieval churchmen decided it would be easier to make headstones by looting the looting the old church than quarrying out new stones.  The church site is on the side of a mountain overlooking a local ringfort

This small rectangle use to be either a private church for the monks or a shrine-- I promise

While the buildings were no longer standing, and the landscape covered in the gravestones of Late Medieval burials, with a keen eye you could still juuuust make out the trenches and earthworks that marked out the enclosure of the church site, and the inner enclosure of the holiest area of the settlement.  Early Irish church sites were frequently divided into two or three sections in order of "holiness" (this site had two sections)-- the holiest area, called sanctissimus, would have the church proper, as well as any shrines or graves, and the less holy area would have housing for the ordained, craft sites (such as a forge or tannery) and other ordinary activities.  The outer enclosure of the site was just as import, if not more, marking the limits of what was considered the sanctified land.  This enclosure had great legal and political importance, since land couldn't really be taken away from the church (while it legally could, it would be a good way of looking like a tyrant) so a king giving rival's lands to the church was an effective way of prevent them from regaining power (such as what happened at the Rock of Cashel), and it was a place of sanctuary, where criminals or soldiers could flee to escape violence (people rarely followed the spirit of the law though, so the annals record a lot of people being dragged out of the churches and executed right outside the gate).

More visible were the cross-slabs, a type of standing stone common at early church sites carved with the image of the cross (hence the creative name).  

The more decorated cross-slab

There are three cross-slabs, one very decorated to look like a Coptic altar-piece-- showing a surprising connection between the Irish monasteries and Egypt-- and the other two having much smaller and plainer crosses carved into them.  One theory is that we're missing a fourth cross-slab, either destroyed or looted, and that these four slabs would act as the cornerstones to a pillar-shrine; under this model this central axis of the shrine would have pointed towards Skellig Michael, a rocky island once famous for the Early Medieval religious hermits that lived in solitude at its peak and now famous for being where Luke hides in Star Wars

Spoiler alert: about five seconds ago I gave away the ending to The Force Awakens

I'm not particularly convinced of this.  Partially because if the "missing" cross-slab was reused as a grave stone, the others would have probably been nicked as well, and there would be a nice hole where the stone was buried to stand up.  Also because I feel we don't need a fourth stone.  The way that the stone are standing, we have the nice slab with the Coptic cross two yards or so before the plain cross slabs, roughly in line with one another.  If we imagine these as forming a triangle, we have the image of Christ's cross (the fancy one) between the two thieves on Mount Calvary

See?

This would shift the central axis away from Skellig Michael.  But wait!  Remember how Mount Calvary was a mountain overlooking the walls of Jerusalem?  Well, now our little crucifixion scene is overlooking...

The ringfort in the valley bellow!

After putting those years in Catholic school to good use, it was time to make the hike through the muddy, dung-covered, overgrown dirt road, but with added fun from going up hill this time, ending a fun day of archaeological adventures.

A Quick Run-Through of More Sites: The Defensive and Natural Landscape of Ireland

Late last week, I moved into a new apartment closer to the city centre, which has had Internet problems, making getting onto the blog a little more difficult to anticipate.  However, now that things seem to have cleared up, I think I'll be able to post a bit more about my adventures in Ireland (although still no solution for the bad dryer-- my room in cover in damp clothes hanging off every available surface to air dry).

Last week, along with my usual class lectures, we had some more field trips to the Garranes Ringfort, the seat of a local king in the Early Medieval period, which was made completely of wood which has now rotted and earthworks which still stand (although the mounds are no longer as high and ditches no longer as deep).  Being the seat of a local king isn't as impressive as it may sound though, there were well over one hundred of the buggers in Ireland at the time.  Due to the lack of urbanization at the time, it also lacks the same clout as the impressive fortified cities found on the continent during the same time, but still a fun place to walk around and imagine at.

Part of the Ringfort's earthworks.  You'll have to imagine a deeper trench, taller mounds, and a palisade along top.

The same trip also visited Ballincarriga Tower House, which is a standard tower/castle/residence of the Late Medieval, and so I'll gloss over it quickly by describing it as a standard tower/castle/residence of the Late Medieval (which is to say, a big tall square tower).

Look how big and square

Sarcasm aside, it was an impressive site, but somewhat lessened with the knowledge that there were a few thousand of the things around back in the day (even some farmers and townspeople could afford the thing!  Don't worry though, this is a proper nobleman's castle).

The interesting bit of the trip was Coppering's Court, which is another big stone house, castle-like but primarily just a wealthy nobleman's house rather than a true defensive feature.  It was crumbling to the point where there's an ever present risk of large chunks of masonry falling down so we couldn't get inside the thing, and to get close to the thing we needed to go through a fence, than through and electric fence, then hop up over a stone fence (the stone fence was authentic though, going back to the days when Coppering Court was in use-- the rest was modern).

Good heavens, this blog is getting long.  Guess I'll have to speed by a few stops.

Drombeg was a nifty stone circle, but those things are of unclear purpose and so I couldn't have much to say even if I wasn't pretending that having a long entry was bad.  Also, it had places called "fulchta fiadh" which were probably used for boiling meat by dumping red-hot rocks into the pools, although again we can't be certain.  They date waaayyy back to the stone age, but Early Medieval sagas mention them still being used (and they were certainly being used for cooking then, but the Early Medieval Irish also used Stone Age ritual sites for prisons and the like so that may not be the original purpose).  

And there was a whole nother field trip that I'll just hit the highlight of: Mitchelstown Caves.  They aren't really of any historical value, but it was rather pretty.  The caves run many kilometers in just about all directions, though only part of it is available to the tourists.

  I was able to geek out over it quite a lot, because the combination of stone caverns with carved-out stairs made it closer to a fantasy world dungeon than the touristy caves I've visited in the States.

Ah!  A hideous cave troll!

Elusive Castle

Two weeks of my July were spent in Lisbon, Portugal. I'd never been on a plane before, let alone abroad, so I wanted to make the most of the trip. And by that I mean I wanted to see a castle. That was my main goal. I didn't care what kind of castle, or how big it was. I just really needed to see one, for whatever reason.

I never thought trying to see a castle would be so difficult. When my Lisbon companions and I first attempted to visit Sintra, a castle and garden an hour or so away from our hostel, we severely underestimated the exhaustion level we'd face in those first few days. We signed up for the tour, had our breakfast, went back to the room to regroup, and promptly fell asleep for three hours.

"It's okay," we thought. "It's early in the trip. We can go whenever." But we were wrong. Over the next few days, we each became engrossed in different things. The purpose of the trip was to attend a writing workshop, so most worked on their readings or writings in the time we had off. The end of our trip neared and we still had not seen the castle. I began to panic. No one else seemed to remember that the castle was the objective. The Holy Grail of touring Portugal. I pestered them until, finally, we decided on a day to visit.

The day arrives, and we are all ready to go. The castle is happening. We're going. But then, tragedy struck. The bus that would take us to Sintra had broken down, and would not be running until at least the next day. My suffering continued.

In a fantastic turn of events, on the last full day of our trip, two of my group members and I rallied together and went on the tour. I'd never been more excited to walk around in 90 degree heat. The castle was not only beautiful, but it was so culturally rich. I felt like I was walking into a film set. Plus, there was a castle cat and he let me take tons of pictures of him, so really the trip was the best day of my life.

Flying In and Forts in Caherdaniel

Last week I flew into Cork, where I'll be spending the semester studying at UCC.  Classes start up tomorrow, so naturally I decided to spend the past week wandering around the city to get familiar and go visit some ancient ruins 140 kilometers away in Co. Kerry, near the small town of Caherdaniel.

Staigue Stone fort is a decent-sized round stone fort of a local lord, around 30 meters across, built in early first century.  It was an impressive sight, and certainly worth the meager one-euro entrance fee, although there wasn't much information about the fort on location (only a small sign with one paragraph in Irish and one in English).

The second stone fort, Caherdaniel Stone Fort, is smaller and I had wished the tourism websites would let me know it's in the middle of a farm that you aren't allowed on, so you can't actually get to the fort itself.  Hopefully this isn't the start of a trend.

Welcome Back

Welcome Back!

Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Study folks are a peripatetic bunch!  And the faculty often spend much of their summer traveling abroad to conferences to deliver papers, visiting museums, and exploring archives, archeological sites, and historic monuments.

This year, to re-launch our AMRS Blog Abroad, I'd like to invite all AMRS faculty and students to post an image or two about their summer travels.  Tell us where you went, and what you saw.  We'd love to learn.

Below is an image of Patience Agbabi, one of the latest and most talented artists to be inspired by Chaucer.  If you follow this link, you'll hear her brilliant cover of Chaucer's Tale of Melibee, the one Canterbury Tale told by Chaucer himself.

Agbabi  gave a dramatic reading at this year's New Chaucer Society conference, held this July in London. I couldn't tape myself from that performance, but here she is on Youtube.

Enjoy!
Patricia DeMarco
Director, AMRS


Patience Agbabi performs a Canterbury Tale.