The alignment of passage tombs in Ireland – horizons, skyscape, and domains of power

Neolithic passage tombs are one of four main types on the island of Ireland. This paper considers their orientation within a statistical and phenomenological framework and finds twenty-three examples which face the rising or setting sun at key times in the annual solar cycle, notably the solstices. The discussion reflects the current archaeoastronomical view that intentional solar alignment was of low precision because of the mostly crude architecture of the tombs. Any calendrical function, such as tracking time, should therefore be viewed as secondary. More significantly, astronomically aligned passage tombs are perceived to embody broader cultural and cosmological beliefs most probably associated with ancestor worship and linking the dead with a deified sun. By extension, axial alignment is interpreted as being symbolically linked with the horizon, considered here as a liminal zone imbued with power and charged with mystery, demarcating the boundary between two worlds. The sun, rising and setting at the horizon, gave diurnal time. Appearing to travel almost ninety degrees from solstice to solstice, it also gave seasonal time. To the Neolithic mind this probably made the sun, especially when it was tangential to the horizon, the supreme cosmic body and source of power in the sky, nourishing the spirits of the elite interred within the tom

The North Sky and the Otherworld: Journeys of the Dead in the Neolithic Considered

The majority of Irish passage tombs (c. 230) predominantly date to the Middle Neolithic (c. 3600–3000 BC). A small number of summit cairns may also contain passage tombs because of their round form, proximity and intervisibility. The island’s passage tombs and related cairns share distinguishing characteristics – elevated siting, visibility and long-range views of distant horizons in varying directions of the compass. This chapter presents the findings of the first scenic analysis of the horizon and views at these sites recorded at an island scale. The method uses measured orientations of horizon sectors related to observed variation in horizon range. This shows that tomb location was likely selected with a preference for view of the distant horizon and, curiously, also in the northerly direction in many cases. This sector of the horizon lies beyond the extreme rising and setting limits of the sun and moon. It is also the region of circumpolar stars which never rise or set and are perpetual in a viewing sense. The hypothesis that the process of cremation released the spirit of the dead to travel to the abode of the ancestors in the north sky, a zone commonly associated with death and the afterlife by other later cultures, is explored

An Architectural Perspective on Structured Sacred Space—Recent Evidence from Iron Age Ireland

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Holmpatrick Graveyard — a description

The term ‘graveyard’ describes a burial ground attached to a church, and ‘historic graveyard’ describes any graveyard or burial ground in use prior to the early twentieth-century. In such places, communities connect with their own history and ancestry, and identify with their place of origin. They have cultural and heritage significance too and, for these reasons, their conservation and interpretation are necessary. Holmpatrick Graveyard is situated in the centre of Skerries, a small coastal town 27 km north of Dublin City. An archipelago of three small islands fringes the local coastline. One of these is locally known as Church Island although it is named St. Patrick’s Island on all Ordnance Survey maps. The placename ‘Holmpatrick’ derives from the Old Norse term for an island, ‘holmr’, and the forename Patrick. The equivalent in the Irish language is Inis Pádraig1, emphasising the strong historical connection of the area with St. Patrick who came to Ireland in the fifth century AD. The placename also links with the Norsemen who reputedly raided the seventh-century stone tomb-shrine of St. Do-Chonna on the island in AD 7982-3. The ruins of a twelfth-century church and related structures still exist there. The Heritage Council (http://www.heritagecouncil.ie/ ) provides guidelines for the protection and sustainable management of all culturally significant places. In the case of a graveyard, this includes an understanding of its cultural, historic, religious and secular importance4. Holmpatrick Graveyard, with its dominant bell tower built in c. 1790, and numerous centuries-old gravestones, has meaning and symbolism that may not be immediately apparent to visitors. Many of the oldest stones are deteriorating due to weathering and their inscriptions are now difficult to read in the majority of cases. Importantly, four are recorded by the National Monuments Service, giving them added protection and status (http://webgis.archaeology.ie/historicenvironment/ ). Historical sources also indicate that the medieval Augustinian Priory of Holmpatrick was sited here and, with the discovery of medieval floor tiles east-northeast of the bell tower, this attests to the antiquity of the place5. The committee of Skerries Tidy Towns (www.skerriesca.com/hom/tidy-towns/ ) has commissioned this panel as part of its wider mission to enrich the built and natural environment for the local community and tourists alike. The aim here is to capture and present some of the skilled work of past masons as portrayed in the commemorative art and verse, all beautifully recorded in stone. Notably, Holmpatrick Graveyard is one of a small number in north County Dublin having gravestones which exhibit a distinct ‘local design repertoire’ and a ‘regional style of folk-art’ created in the eighteenth-century6. Eleven of these, with their characteristic clockwise-spirals, nested lozenge motifs and central dots, typify this style. While such ornamentation is universal, and can occur spontaneously in many art forms, there is an obvious similarity with elements of the megalithic art tradition first discovered in 1699 in the nearby Boyne Valley (37 years before the James Martin gravestone was inscribed). It is plausible, given the geographical proximity and chronology of both styles, that this local cluster of folk art was conceived by a mason(s) aware of, or influenced by, this prehistoric art tradition. Adding to the site’s interest, the stories portrayed on many of the engraved stones are poignant and describe grief, loss and local maritime tragedies. The illustrated panel which accompanies this introduction includes a high-resolution aerial image flown by Mark Broderick (http://markbroderick.ie/ ). The annotations show the location of the bell tower and 13 featured gravestones and grave slabs. All are located in the historic section of the graveyard and are described and partially interpreted. Where necessary, Digital Imaging Processing techniques were used to improve the clarity of the entities. In some cases, digitally-created facsimiles more clearly reveal the carved detail now largely obscured by erosion and lichen growth. A print of the panel is on permanent display at the graveyard entrance. A digital version is freely available from DIT’s online research repository ARROW under the author’s name, or directly at http://arrow.dit.ie/beschreoth/65/ . A link to ARROW is also hosted on the Skerries Tidy Towns webpage of the Skerries Community Association website (www.skerriesca.com ). Once installed on a mobile phone, or other hand-held device, the panel can be used as a digital field guide for site exploration. Being portable, the user can exploit the high resolution imagery, engage onsite with the featured monuments in an interactive and more informed way, and bring a modern focus on the hidden history of Holmpatrick Graveyard, Skerries. Acknowledgment The author gratefully acknowledges the permission granted by the Photographic Unit of the National Monuments Service of the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs (DoAHRRGA) to reproduce three of their images in the accompanying illustration. REFERENCES 1. Fiontar (DCU) and The Placenames Branch (2015) Placenames Database of Ireland. Available at http://www.logainm.ie/en/ [Accessed December 2016]. 2. Hennessy, W. ( 1887–1901) Annala Uladh. Annals of Ulster; otherwise, Annala Senait. Annals of Senat. Dublin: By the authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty\u27s Treasury, under the direction of the Council of the Royal Irish Academy. 3. MacShamhráin, A. (2004) The Island of St. Patrick: Church and ruling dynasties in Fingal and Meath, 400–1148. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 4. The Heritage Council and O’ Brien, C. (2011) Guidance for the Care, Conservation and Recording of Historic Graveyards. Kilkenny: The Heritage Council. 5. Baker, C. (2002) Medieval Tiles from Holmpatrick Graveyard, Skerries, Co. Dublin. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 132: 143–147. 6. Mytum, H. (2004) Local Traditions in Early Eighteenth-Century Commemoration: The Headstone Memorials from Balrothery, Co. Dublin, and Their Place in the Evolution of Irish and British Commemorative Practice. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature 104C(1): 1–35. ADDITIONAL SOURCES Australia ICOMOS Inc. (1999) The Burra Charter (The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance). Available at http://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/BURRA-CHARTER-1999_charter-only.pdf [Accessed December 2016]. Cooper, L. H. and Denny-Brown, A. (2016) The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture. New York: Routledge. Corlett, C. (2010) Some eighteenth-century granite headstones from Wicklow. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 140: 35–47. Egan, M. J. S. (1994) Holmpatrick Graveyard, Skerries, Co. Dublin. Dublin City and County Graveyards 7: 69–229. Fingal County Council (2016) Historic graveyards. Available at http://www.fingal.ie/planning-and-buildings/heritage-in-fingal/heritage-and-communities/historic-graveyards/ [Accessed December 2016]. Fitzgerald, W. (1910) Holmpatrick Churchyard. Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead in Ireland 1907-08-09 VII(1): 338–342. Fox, C. (1975) Some notes on Holmpatrick Graveyard. Skerries Historical Society, Archive No. 105. Available at http://oldskerries.ie/some-notes-on-holmpatrick-graveyard/ . [Accessed December 2016]. Grimes, B. (1982) Holmpatrick Graveyard. Skerries Historical Society, Archive No. 131. Available at http://oldskerries.ie/holmpatrick-graveyard/ [Accessed December 2016]. Grogan, E. (1998) Eighteenth-century headstones and the stone mason tradition in County Wicklow: the work of Dennis Cullen of Monaseed. In Corlett, C. and O\u27 Sullivan, A. (eds), Wicklow Archaeology and History. County Wicklow Archaeological Society: 41–63. Hourihane, C. (2000) The Mason and his Mark: Masons\u27 Marks in the Medieval Irish Archbishoprics of Cashel and Dublin. British Archaeological Reports 294. Jung, C. G., von Franz, M.-L., Henderson, J. L., Jacobi, J. and Jaffé, A.( eds). (1964) Man and his symbols. Canada: Dell Publishing. Longfield, A. K. (1943) Some 18th Century Irish Tombstones. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 13(2): 29–39. Longfield, A. K. (1951) Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Decorated Headstones. Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society 12(3): 113–118. McCluskey, S. C. (2014) Orientation of Christian Churches. In Ruggles, C. L. N. (ed), Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy. Springer, New York: 1703–1710. [Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_173 ]. McCormack, F. (1979) A Group of Tradesmen\u27s Headstones (with notes on their trades and tools). Clogher Record 10(1): 12–22. Mytum, H. (2003/2004) Artefact Biography as an Approach to Material Culture: Irish Gravestones as a Material Form of Genealogy. Journal of Irish Archaeology 12/13: 111–127. Mytum, H. C. (2000) Recording and analysing graveyards. Practical Handbook 15. York: Council for British Archaeology. O\u27Sullivan, M. (1993) Megalithic Art in Ireland. Dublin: Town House and Country House. Phelan, M. M. (1996) The O’Kerin School of Monumental Sculpture in Ossory and its Environs in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 126: 167–181. Ryan, M., Mooney, K., Prendergast, F. and Masterson, B. (2004). Church Island: a description. In Mac Shamhráin, A. (ed), The island of St Patrick : church and ruling dynasties in Fingal and Meath, 400–1148. Dublin, Four Courts Press: 106–124. [Available at http://arrow.dit.ie/dsisbk/1/ ]. Sprague, R. (2005) Burial terminology: a guide for researchers. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Stokes, M. (1898) The Instruments of the Passion. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 8(2): 137–140

Social Network Analysis of Passage Tomb Intervisibility

Passage tombs are widely regarded as the most homogenous prehistoric funerary monument class on the island in terms of their morphology, ornamentation, assemblage of finds, landscape siting and spatial clustering. Contextually, the archaeological classification of Irish megalithic tombs has identified court, portal and passage types as Neolithic with wedge tombs constructed in the later Bronze Age. The small number of single Neolithic burials (Linkardstown type) is excluded from this case study. The writer has examined the island\u27s passage tomb tradition from five perspectives - spatial cohesion, symbolism in elevation/height, landscape setting and vista, archaeoastronomy and intervisibility. Tomb intervisibility in the corpus of c. 230 extant tombs and possibly-related hilltop cairns (c. 50) was recorded by the writer during fieldwork. This relational data is treated here as a set of ties and analysed using a network-based approach. The analysis method draws on Social Network Analysis theory as the research tool. Tomb centrality is determined, yielding indices which rank these monuments according to this measure. Although the findings are preliminary, this technique brings a new focus to the landscape siting of the tombs and considers their potential as being sacred places having a broader social role in additional to being abodes of the dead. The hypothesis is that visibility and intervisibility may have constituted a visual network, were an integral part of information/knowledge exchange and may even have aided human movement and trade across the island

Shadow Casting Phenomena at Newgrange

A digital model of the Newgrange passage tomb and surrounding ring of monoliths known as the Great Circle is used to investigate sunrise shadow casting phenomena at the monument. Diurnal variation in shadow directions and lengths are analysed for their potential use in the Bronze Age to indicate the passage of seasonal time. Computer-aided simulations are developed from a photogrammetric survey to accurately show how three of the largest monoliths, located closest to the tomb entrance and archaeologically coded GC1, GC-1 and GC-2, cast their shadows onto the vertical face of the entrance kerbstone, coded K1. The phenomena occur at astronomically interesting declinations, consistent with possible seasonal observance of the rising Sun at key dates in the Bronze Age when the Great Circle was constructed. The analysis further shows how the dominant three-spiral motif on K1 is repeatedly targeted by shadow casting on these dates, making this artistically elaborate motif focal. This could indicate the positioning of GC1, GC-1 and GC-2 enabled users in the prehistoric past to predict and mark seasonally different periods of ceremonial or ritual importance. The investigation further reveals that GC3 casts a shadow onto the base of GC5 on dates which are compatible with the proposed low-precision calendrical model. The cycle of shadow casting is considered to commence and end at winter solstice. Recorded site photography verifies the computer simulations and provides visualisations for archaeological record

CONFERENCE REVIEW ‘’The Astronomy in Skyscapes - Archaeoastronomy beyond Alignments’’. Full day session at the National Astronomy Meeting, University of Nottingham (United Kingdom), 27th June–1st July, 2016

The National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) was held at the University of Nottingham Jubilee Campus on 27th June–1st July, 2016. This event is the primary annual scientific conference for astronomers and space scientists drawn mainly from the UK and Ireland. It is sponsored and coordinated by RAS. NAM 2016 had eight plenary talks spanning topics from planets to cosmology. Additionally, there were 60 parallel sessions broadly split into five themes, one of which was archaeoastronomy. This was the third successive NAM conference to feature a parallel session on archaeoastronomy, and was organised and chaired by Daniel Brown, an astronomer at the School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University

Interpreting Megalithic Tomb Orientations and Siting Within Broader Cultural Contexts

This paper assesses the measured axial orientations and siting of Irish passage tombs. The distribution of monuments with passages/entrances directed at related tombs/cairns is shown. Where this phenomenon occurs, the targeted structure is invariably located at a higher elevation on the skyline and this could suggest a symbolic and hierarchical relationship in their relative siting in the landscape. Additional analysis of astronomical declinations at a national scale has identified tombs with an axial alignment towards the rising and setting positions of the Sun at the winter and summer solstices. A criteria-based framework is developed which potentially allows for these types of data to be more meaningfully considered and culturally interpreted within broader archaeological and social anthropological contexts