- Artefact Research
The North Munster region has previously been identified as an important area in Late Bronze Age Ireland on the basis of the specialised gold and bronze work found there. The research programme for the North Munster Project includes a special study of these artefacts. For the purposes of the artefact research all of counties Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and North Kerry have been examined. In excess of 500 individual items from the late prehistoric period have been recorded from about two hundred different places in total. Some of these occur as hoards (consisting of two or more objects in the same deposit); others are assemblages of material deposited in one spot over time; others represent collections of objects recovered during the course of excavation; many others occur as single finds.
The patterning of artefact types and the contexts from which they were recovered, are important sources of information which shed more light on the way people used the landscape they inhabited. It is generally accepted that many of the objects were deliberately deposited as part of some ritual acts. Weaponry recovered from bogs and riverbeds may have found their way there through such activity. Tools are not generally used in these ways and the contexts bear this out. Almost 80% of the weapons with information regarding findspot come from wet contexts, most from bogs, and a small number from rivers (as against the country-wide pattern which shows the bulk of weaponry coming from rivers), whereas 60% of tools come from dryland contexts. Actual loss may account for a small percentage of objects from both wet and dryland.
The North Munster region has been characterised by the amount of fine goldwork found. This gold, however, represents only a fifth of the total number of objects being studied and a fifth of the findspots. However, the goldwork is generally of outstanding craftsmanship. It falls into two broad categories, sheet gold and solid or hollow bars. All the gorgets ( a type of collar), boxes, and bowls are of sheet gold, with highly complex designs worked on them. The lockrings (possibly a hair-ornament) are of wire and sheet gold. The bracelets and dress fasteners are of solid or hollow bars, shaped either by hammering or casting. The objects in the Mooghaun, Co. Clare hoard, believed to have numbered over 200 items of gold, were all solid bracelets, ingots or C-sectioned collars, of a form unknown elsewhere. While the quantity of gold was enormous, the skill required to make the objects was not the equal of that necessary to produce a gorget.
Interestingly, the vast bulk of goldwork known from the region is believed to date to the Late Bronze Age (1200-700 BC), with only ten or so pieces dating to other periods, almost all to the Early Bronze Age (2000-1700 BC). The context of the gold shows that its deposition may have been primarily ritual as 80% of it comes from wet places. Much of the prehistoric gold found in the last hundred years or so has since disappeared. Only one piece is known from the Bog of Cullen in Co. Tipperary, which produced at least 40 objects over the period of the cutting of the bog. Many finds of bronze objects have also disappeared. The fact that so much material in museums today has no information regarding the original place of recovery is another form of loss, as they cannot be placed within their regional setting. Bearing in mind that virtually all of the objects crafted in organic materials, (wood, textiles, leather, bone etc.) have not survived, we have to assume that a large body of material, some of it undoubtedly prestigious as the horse hair belt from Cromaghs, Co. Antrim shows, is no longer available to us.