A History of Ireland in 100 Objects Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Contents

  Prelims

  Introduction

  1. Mesolithic fish trap, c. 5000 B.C

  2. Ceremonial axehead, 3600 B.C

  3. Neolithic bowl, c. 3500 B.C

  4. Flint macehead, 3300–2800 B.C

  5. Neolithic bag, 3800–2500 B.C

  6. Basket earrings, c.2300 B.C

  7. Pair of gold discs, 2200–2000 B.C

  8. Coggalbeg gold hoard, 2300–2000 B.C

  9. Bronze Age funerary pots, 1900–1300 B.C

  10. Tara torcs, c.1200 B.C

  11. Mooghaun hoard, c.800 B.C

  12. Gleninsheen gold gorget, c.800–700 B.C

  13. Castlederg bronze cauldron, 700–600 B.C

  14. Iron spearhead, 800–675 B.C

  15. Broighter boat, c.100 B.C

  16. Armlet, Old-croghan Man, 362–175 B.C

  17. Loughnashade trumpet, c.100 B.C

  18. Keshcarrigan bowl, early first century AD

  19. Corleck head, first or second century AD

  20. Petrie ‘Crown’, second century AD

  21. Cunorix stone, AD 460–75

  22. St. Patrick’s confessio, c. AD 460–90

  23. Mullaghmast stone, AD 500–600

  24. St Patrick’s bell, c. seventh century

  25. Springmount wax tablets, late-sixteenth century

  26. Ballinderry brooch, c. AD 600

  27. Donore handle, 700–720

  28. Book of Kells, c.800

  29. ‘Tara’ brooch, eighth century

  30. Ardagh Chalice, eighth century

  31. Derrynaflan Paten, late-eighth/early-ninth century

  32. Moylough belt shrine, eighth/ninth century

  33. Rinnagan Crucifixion Plaque, eighth/ninth century

  35. Oseberg Ship, c.815

  36. Ballinderry Sword, mid-ninth century

  37. Decorated lead weights, c.900

  38. Roscrea Brooch, late-ninth century

  39. Slave chain, late-ninth or early-tenth century

  40. Silver cone, mid-tenth century

  41. Carved crook, early-eleventh century

  42. Breac maodhóg, late-eleventh century

  43. Clonmacnoise crozier, eleventh century

  44. Cross of Cong, early-twelfth century

  45. ‘Strongbow’s tomb’, twelfth century

  46. Laudabiliter papal bull, 1155

  47. Figure of a horseman, thirteenth century

  48. Domhnach Airgid, c.1350

  49. Waterford charter roll, 1215–1373

  50. Two coins, 1280s and 1460

  51. Processional cross, 1479

  52. Magi cope, c.1470

  53. De Burgo–O’Malley chalice, 1494

  54. Kavanagh charter horn, twelfth and fifteenth centuries

  55. Gallowglass gravestone, fifteenth or sixteenth century

  56. Book of Common Prayer, 1551

  57. Salamander pendant, c.1588

  58. Morion, late-sixteenth century

  59. Leac na RÍogh, tenth–fifteenth century

  60. Wassail bowl, late-sixteenth century

  61. Deposition on atrocities, 1641

  62. O’Queely chalice, 1640

  63. Fleetwood cabinet, c.1652

  64. Books of survey and distribution, mid-seventeenth century

  65. King William’s gauntlets, c.1690

  66. Crucifixion stone, 1740

  67. Conestoga wagon, eighteenth century

  68. Wood’s halfpence, 1722

  69. Dillon regimental flag, 1745

  70. Rococo silver candlestick, c.1745

  71. Engraving of linen-makers, 1782

  72. Cotton panel showing volunteer review, 1783

  73. Pike, 1798

  74. Act of Union Blacklist, early-nineteenth century

  75. Penrose glass decanter, late-eighteenth century

  76. Robert Emmet’s ring, 1790s

  77. Wicker cradle,nineteenth-twentieth centuries

  78. Daniel O’Connell’s ‘chariot’, 1844

  79. Stokes ‘tapestry’, 1833–53

  80. ‘Captain Rock’ threatening letter, 1842

  81. Empty cooking pot, nineteenth century

  82. Emigrant’s teapot, late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century

  83. William Smith O’Brien gold cup, 1854

  84. Parnell silver casket, 1884

  85. Carlow Cathedral pulpit, 1899

  86. Youghal Lace collar, 1906

  87. GAA medal, 1887

  88. Reclining Buddha, late-nineteenth century

  89. Titanic launch ticket, 1911

  90. Lamp from River Clyde, 1915

  91. James Connolly’s shirt, 1916

  92. Rejected coin design, 1927

  93. Boyne corracle, 1928

  94. Eileen Gray chair, 1926

  95. Emigrant’s suitcase, 1950s

  96. Washing machine, 1950s

  97. Bloody Sunday handkerchief, 1972

  98. Intel microprocessor, 1994

  99. Anglo Irish Bank sign, 2000–2011

  100. Decommissioned AK47, 2005

  Acknowledgements

  Picture Credits

  Suggested Reading

  Map

  Where to find the Objects

  Copyright

  You may also like

  Introduction

  Fintan O’Toole

  “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work…is lacking in one element: its presencem in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.”

  I

  The story of human beings on the island of Ireland is very short. The earliest evidence of people living here goes back only to c. 8000 BC, to the era known as the Mesolithic or middle stone age. This may seem like a long time, but not when we remember that there may have been people living in southern Britain over a quarter of a million years ago. Early humans, in their gradual expansion out of Africa, moved vast distances across Asia and through the full length of America, but there are no traces of them having made it to Ireland. If any of them did come here as hunters, they would certainly have retreated by around 23,000 years ago, when expanding glaciers and intense cold made north-western Europe inhospitable. When people began to push northwards again around 15,000 years ago, no one seems to have settled in Ireland. Again, even if they did, they would almost certainly have been pushed out by another long period of severe cold around 11000 BC, which killed off many of the animals on which they might have lived, such as the giant Irish elk. This left Ireland with a relatively poor range of large mammals. The earliest Irish settlers, at sites such as Mount Sandel in Co. Derry and Lough Boora in Co. Offaly, seem to have depended heavily on wild boar and fish for their non-plant foods. Ireland was not an easy place in which to survive.

  These conditions had two effects. One is that Irish culture is quite a recent and concentrated phenomenon. Most of it still exists, of course, in the long obscurity of pre history. It is not, however, a vast, panoramic epic— it can be imagined as a single story. The other effect is that, from the beginning, those who settled in Ireland had to adapt to conditions that were not typical of southern or western Europe. The food and the environment were, by the European standards of the time, unusual. As archaeologist J.P. Mallory puts it ‘the earliest occupants of Ireland were not merely an extension of their ancestral population, but one that was required to adapt to a very different environment and develop uniquely Irish strategies to survive’.

  We do not really know where the first people to settle in Ireland came from. One possibility is an area between north Wales and the Solway Firth on the west coast of Brit
ain that was being gradually inundated by rising sea levels and that is now, indeed, under the Irish Sea. What does seem clear is that, for a very long time, the number of people on the island was very small. For the first 40 per cent of the whole period in which Ireland has been occupied, the total population was probably of the order of 3,000 people. This gives us a third significant aspect of the emerging story of Ireland: it was small. We have, then, three characteristics present from the beginning of Irish culture: concentrated in time, shaped by distinctive conditions and small in scale.

  This is not to suggest that Ireland was a place apart, or that its culture was not transformed from time to time by incoming people and new developments. Easily the biggest of such developments was the arrival of farming around 4000 BC. We know that this cannot have been simply a spontaneous discovery by the people who already inhabited the island. Ireland did not have wild cereals or wild cattle, sheep or goats that could be domesticated—they had to come from somewhere else. New kinds of houses and pottery and the emergence of great passage tombs came with the development of farming, making it likely that the first farmers arrived from elsewhere—most probably Britain or (less likely) north-western France.

  Other big changes tended to happen in the same way. The emergence of metal-working (around 2500 BC) was probably the result of some inward migration of so-called Beaker people from Britain and continental Europe. The development of an elite warrior culture about a thousand years later seems to be associated with the presence of at least some foreigners from as far away as central Europe, and is certainly linked to intense contacts with Britain and the continent. (Ironically, one of the ‘invasions’ for which there is no evidence at all is that most famously associated with Ireland —the supposed arrival of the Celts.) Contacts such as these are probably also at the root of the development of the early forms of language that emerged in Ireland, which may have evolved as a lingua franca for Atlantic Europe.

  Other huge changes also came from outside. Christianity brought a new belief system, literacy, the learning of the Graeco-Roman and Jewish worlds and entry into a ‘universal’ culture. The Vikings brought urban settlements and money. The Anglo-Normans brought feudalism. The English brought cities, a new language, printing, new systems of administration and land management and the end of clan power. The European Union enabled rapid urbanisation and ‘modernity’. Corporations based in the United States brought economic globalisation and technological transformation.

  Yet, these waves of change always washed up on the same shores. Even the most profound influences are continually adapted to what is there already. There is a continuity of population—surveys of Ireland’s genetic profile fail to find any significant evidence of large-scale inward migrations after those of the early farmers. Moreover, there is also a cultural continuity. It is not static, not a fixed inheritance of images and ideas that is passed on from time immemorial. It is, rather, a way of using the old to make sense of the new. From very early on, the people living in Ireland make objects that suit themselves and their own conditions: even the very early stone tools found in Ireland are distinctive. Throughout Irish history, this remains true. The place—its geography and environment, its particular mixture of ‘native’ and ‘foreigner’ (categories that change radically over time)—exerts its own peculiar pressures. People respond to those pressures as best they can, trying to adapt to change while taking comfort in what is familiar.

  This is as true of the latest objects featured in this selection as it is of the earliest. It may be the case that globalisation spreads the same objects everywhere, and we can certainly see this happening in Ireland. Nevertheless, it is striking that even our final object is an international product that has been adapted to Irish needs by making it impossoble to use. Even now, the three features of Irish culture present from the start-concentrated, distinctive and small-still apply.

  II

  But why tell this stroy through physical objects? Does a physical object, in our digital age, still mean anything? With the technologies at our disposal, almost any object can be reproduced with absolute precision. Worn or smudged surfaces can be turned into clear and vibrant images. Fragments can be recast as unified entities. Reproductions can have the same form and feel as the original. They can even surpass it- the detail we can see in contemporary prints from the Book Of Kells goes well beyond what was visible to most of those who handled the real thing. Some people who run museums have concluded that in the digital age, we are no longer interested in in mere inert things and must be immersed in experiences.

  There is plenty og good theory to justify this belief. Why should we make a fetish of an object just because it is old? Why should we imagine that the idea of an original means anything in a culture of mass reproduction? After all, the making of multiple copies of an object has been possible for a long time—the ancient Greeks made bronzes, terracotta and coins in this way. Are they less beautiful because they are not ‘original’? The development of woodcuts, engraving, etching and printing long ago blurred the line between the original and the copy.

  Is there not something primitive, or on the other hand something unhealthily consumerist, about treating objects with reverence? Is there any real difference between the desire to see the original of, say the Book of Kells, and the creepy compulsion that makes someone pay a year’s salary to buy one of Elvis Presley’s used hankies on eBay?

  There is a good, sober, respectably scientific answer to these questions. Unlike reproductions or digital images, original objects are not static. They contain secrets that can be unlocked with ever newer techniques. We are learning astonishing things from old objects, things we never thought they could reveal—exactly how old they are, where they came from, what their own histories might be. No-one knew even a few decades ago that it would be possible some day to use tiny fragments of an ancient object to figure out its age, or that the chemicals in the teeth of a body in a grave might tell us where the owner of an ancient sword had spent his youth. Yet, objects can now tell us startling stories—that the stone for an ancient ceremonial axe found in the west of Ireland came from the Alps, or that the man who brought a beautiful gold ornament to these islands grew up thousands of kilometres to the east.

  Beyond this eminently rational excuse for being fascinated with original objects there is nevertheless an irrational force. You feel it every time you look at something in a museum, find it interesting, and then, looking at the label, see the words ‘this is a copy. The original is...’. There is a deep and entirely unreasonable disappointment. You know that what you are seeing is probably better, clearer, more whole, than the original; it is not, however, the thing itself. That disappointment tells us something important about the magnetic attractiveness of historic objects.

  Perhaps life in a digital culture enhances, rather than detracts from, this magnetism. We live with vastly more images than any humans have ever done. James Joyce coined the phrase ‘bairdboard bombardment screen’ to describe television, but the bombardment of the senses with rapidly-shifting two-dimensional pictures has become almost unavoidable in contemporary urban life. Maybe for this very reason a three- dimensional object that comes to us over the oceans of time has an aura of quiet strangeness. It occupies a different kind of space, and it is, as John Keats called his Grecian urn, the ‘foster child of silence and slow time’.

  An old object does not carry such a potent charge just because of the things that can be reproduced so well with our technologies—the form, the materials, the decorative skills. Its value does not even lie in the unique information it can impart to archaeologists, historians and scientists. What makes it pulse with life is the idea of the people who touched and were touched by it. It is the hands that made it, the eyes that feasted on or feared it, the terror, wonder or delight it evoked. It is the simple, awe-inspiring thought—this thing connects me to my ancestors. It is, in Walter Benjamin’s phrase, ‘the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence’.
I may never fully understand it, especially if it comes from the very distant past, but in the moment I encounter it, I am sharing some tiny fragment of the lives that it touched.

  This sense of sharing something with the past is not entirely abstract. Many of the things that survive from the past had an aura of magic about them. Sometimes they were created specifically to generate that feeling of awe. Sometimes they acquired it through their association with momentous events. The magic they have for us may spring from different considerations (that they are old and famous), but it is at least analogous to what our ancestors may have felt in their presence. If you look at a magical jadeitite axe from 6,000 years ago, the feeling you get is still the feeling it was meant to evoke, that of being in the presence of a thing that represents a force beyond the merely physical, something large and mysteriously evocative. The Greeks had a word for it—charis, the allure of objects.

  Objects can put us in touch with the past in this direct and immediate way, but they also help us to a more complex understanding of that past. There is a certain paradox that surrounds them. They seem precise and fixed, literally tangible. When so much about the past—especially the Irish past—is contested, physical things seem to provide secure anchors in history. They ought to make things simpler. Yet, when you actually examine any object, this apparent simplicity quickly falls away.

  Interesting objects tend to provoke more questions than they can answer. There are the simple questions: why and when were they made? How were they used? These often turn out to be not quite so simple, especially with objects of great antiquity. In the case of Ireland, where much of pre history is still obscure, early objects sometimes serve to tell us how much we do not yet know. They give us glimpses of a tangible certainty, only to keep it beyond our grasp.

  Beyond the basic questions, there is always the larger one: what did this thing mean when it was made? As the dates come closer to our own, it becomes easier to attempt an answer, because the culture becomes more like our own and we have so much more information. The further we reach back in time, however, the more we are reminded of the inescapable fact that an object is mute without its context. Whether it is a silver candlestick from Georgian Dublin or an illuminated page of the Book of Kells, a conical button from Viking Ireland or a gold disc from the Bronze Age, an Eileen Gray chair or a Stone Age macehead from Knowth, it carries its own codes of meaning. It expresses some kind of power—religious, political or economic. It suggests a place in the world—that of its owner and that of those it was intended to impress. Objects do not just have stories, they tell stories. What they said to their contemporaries may, however, be very different from what they now say to us.