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Around 1,300 years ago, just north of what today is Roscommon town in the Irish county of the same name, a high-status settlement had reached the peak of its local influence. Rising from humble beginnings as a small farmstead, over subsequent centuries the settlement expanded to become a prosperous centre of production, supplying neighbouring communities with a diverse range of high-quality goods, and slaughtering huge numbers of cattle and other animals. A least some of this meat may have been consumed in large funerary feasts, as this spot also became the focus of burial activity, with more than 500 graves dug within its bounds. Despite its apparent importance, though, the site would ultimately become completely forgotten, fading not only from historical record and popular memory, but from the landscape altogether – that is, until its remains were brought to light once more during excavations by IAC Archaeology Ltd.
In 2015, the N61 road was set to be realigned to remove a dangerous bend, and the resulting development offered archaeologists the opportunity to explore a 2.5km corridor within Ranelagh townland. It was expected to be fairly routine pre-construction work, although the surrounding landscape was known to be archaeologically busy, with 38 other known sites – from ringforts and ring ditches to field systems – documented in the immediate vicinity. Even so, the project’s findings exceeded all expectations. As well as unpicking the evolution of a previously undocumented settlement and associated cemetery, IAC Archaeology’s investigations (funded by Transport Infrastructure Ireland, through Roscommon County Council) recovered a wealth of artefacts illuminating the activities, industries, and experiences of a medieval community over a long sweep of time. The discoveries have now been published in full (see ‘Further reading’ on p.42), sharing some of the powerful and poignant human stories that are reflected in the archaeology.
Signs of the living
After very limited Neolithic and Bronze Age activity on the site, the settlement began in earnest c.AD 350, appearing initially as a simple, smallish farmstead ringed only by very rudimentary defences in the form of a narrow, shallow ditch. At this point in history, the site probably supported a single farming family: they were raising both animals and cereal crops, and making or using objects of iron, antler, and copper alloy. From its earliest days, the medieval community had a dedicated burial ground, with 37 inhumations attributed to this phase, all but seven of which were interred within the area of the enclosure ditches. The farmstead is believed to belong to a site-type known in Irish archaeology as a ‘settlement-cemetery’: an enclosure with a secular (that is, not associated with a church, although the burials themselves may follow Christian practices) familial burial plot. This phenomenon may have had its origins in late Iron Age traditions, and appears to have remained the norm until burial in consecrated ground became more typical in the 9th century.
From such a simple start, within a few centuries the settlement had evidently grown both in size and status as, c.AD 650-750, it was expanded and remodelled with a much more substantial and more obviously defensive ditch – a development that would also have made it much more visible in the local landscape. Its inhabitants were still practising a mixed farming economy, as well as carrying out more complex metalworking – evidence from this phase speaks of smithing and the manufacture of a wide range of metal objects, including iron and copper-alloy pins, blades, straps, and nails – and the burial ground continued to grow, too, gaining another 44 burials.
Interestingly, domestic aspects of the site seem to have been relatively short-lived – instead, its industrial activity accelerated and expanded dramatically, until by AD 750-1000 it was a major production centre creating such diverse items as textiles, leather goods, tools, and weapons, as well as hosting ‘prestige industries’ like jewellery-making and possibly brewing. Kilns where cereals may have been processed for this last activity, as well as for food and animal fodder, were found to contain charred grains of barley, oats, rye, and wheat, and fine metalworking was reflected by crucible fragments with residues of silver, copper, and iron.
Further productive activities were represented by a diverse range of iron and copper-alloy tools including shears, awls, knives, an auger, a fragment of a sawblade, and the head from a hammer, as well as spindle whorls, loom weights, and needles made of antler and animal bone. This assemblage conjures images of a bustling, busy place – but more personal traces of the people who carried out this work can be seen in the form of objects including bone and antler combs, iron and bone pins that would have secured clothing, and bits of bangles and brooches.
Equally interesting are the gaps in this picture: there was no clear evidence for any buildings within the enclosure (other than a scant scatter of post-holes from later in the site’s history, c.AD 1000-1150), though some of the nails, staples, and iron fittings may have come from timber buildings. The archaeologists also recovered no fragments of glass or pottery bowls or vessels for drinking or cooking, though metal and wood could have fulfilled this role as well.
It appears that, from a family home, the site had evolved into some kind of regional hub, supporting, supplying, and possibly administering other ringforts in the region. It also seems to have become a local focus for burial, as this period sees the cemetery at its peak, gaining 203 more graves. This funerary function would ultimately become the site’s main purpose: even as the productive area began to contract c.AD 1000-1150 and, by 1150-1410, was backfilled, this location would continue to attract new burials.
Signs of the dead
In total, IAC Archaeology’s excavations revealed 557 inhumations as well as almost 900 disarticulated deposits of human bone representing at least 108 more adults, children, and babies. Careful on-site documentation of the varied ways in which these individuals had been laid to rest, and analysis of the human remains at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), have opened an invaluable window into a community’s lives and losses, as well as hints of their beliefs and relationships.
As mentioned above, like other ‘settlement-cemetery’ sites, the Ranelagh burial ground was not associated with any ecclesiastical building, but most of the graves were arranged according to Christian tradition with their occupants lying stretched out on their backs, their heads to the west. This was not universal, however, and a small number of skeletons were found to be prone (face-down) or in other positions with flexed arms and/or legs. Idiosyncratic arrangements are sometimes described as ‘deviant burials’, interpreted as expressing societal disapproval of an individual or some kind of posthumous punishment – but the fact that these individuals had still been interred in the communal burial ground might indicate that they should instead be seen more neutrally as ‘atypical’, perhaps expressing a personal choice by the person’s family that may have been intended to imbue the grave with a particular religious meaning. For example, the prone burials and those with limbs bent at the elbows or knees might represent prayer.
Despite the site’s apparent prosperity, though, the burials also demonstrate how life for those associated with it was hard – and often short. Of the more than 550 people buried at the site, 69.5% were under 18 at the time of their death, and over half of this group (37%) had not reached their first birthday. This stark statistic reflects the harsh reality of life in a pre-industrial society: a world in which two thirds of the population did not make it to adulthood. The fact that premature deaths were common does not seem to have desensitised this community to such losses, however. The care and attention devoted to the Ranelagh burials – particularly in the case of very young children, such as the newborn twins SK453 and SK455 who appear to have been placed in their shared grave holding hands, as well as in some other paired burials that we will discuss below – clearly speak of how keenly their deaths had been felt by the surviving community.
Given the elaborate funerary feasts that seem to have been held at the site, it is interesting (and poignant) to note that high infant mortality may have been linked to a poor diet being the norm for the local population. Analysis of the baby skeletons shows high levels of scurvy and rickets, caused by vitamin deficiencies that might indicate that the women who breastfed them were very malnourished. It could also be that infants were largely kept indoors, shielding their vulnerable bodies from the elements but also from the sun’s supply of Vitamin D. Older children still make up a significant proportion of the site’s dead, with 16% aged 6-12 years and 8.1% aged 12-18, but these declining numbers suggest that, if an individual survived early childhood, they had a good chance of reaching adulthood. As for the adult population, most seem to have survived to middle and older age.
To learn more about this community, 40 adult and juvenile skeletons were selected for aDNA analysis (which was undertaken by Dr Lara Cassidy in Trinity College Dublin), and of these 36 produced good enough results to warrant deeper genome sequencing. From this, it was possible to reconstruct individuals’ ancestry, physical appearance, and kinship with each other, while examination of isotopes – chemical signatures preserved in our bones and teeth – shed light on where they had spent their early years, if they had moved around in life, and their diet. It appears that most of the people buried at the site had grown up locally, but among the newcomers (who were mainly female, hinting at marriage traditions where women moved to live with their new husband’s community) there was a particularly striking outlier in SK488.
This was a woman – red-haired, with brown or hazel eyes – who had died c.AD 971-1115 and had been buried in the communal cemetery like everyone else. Her genetic ancestry was very different, however, having more in common with people from north-western England – Cumbria, West Yorkshire, and Lancashire – than Ireland. Isotope analysis corroborates this, demonstrating similarities with data from early medieval burials in Yorkshire. It appears that this woman or her immediate ancestors had been migrants to the area – and comparatively high levels of lead also suggest that SK488’s childhood had been spent in a much more urban environment than where she was buried.
Telling traditions
One of the more unusual aspects of the Ranelagh cemetery is the notably high presence of grave goods. In a recent review of around 11,000 early medieval burials from 156 sites in Ireland (in Mapping Death: burial in late Iron Age and early medieval Ireland; see also CA 374), Elizabeth O’Brien observed that only 0.8% of the graves she studied contained artefacts. At the Ranelagh site, a full 39% of burials were furnished in some way. The most common inclusion (22.2% of the graves) was one or more quartz pebbles, a known tradition from Christian burial grounds in Britain and Ireland, where they are thought to have represented baptism and resurrection.
After this, the next most frequent grave goods were tools and other objects made of iron, followed by worked stone items and flakes of struck flint/chert (though it is not always clear if these are deliberately placed or incidental waste material in the grave-fill). There were also a small number of bone pins, needles, and spindle whorls, and five burials contained a single glass or amber bead. As these were lone finds rather than part of a necklace, it has been suggested that they may have had some kind of talismanic significance.
Another potentially meaningful object came from the grave of SK176, an older man who had died c.AD 688-882. Locally born, with light brown hair and brown eyes, he had been laid out supine in traditional Christian style, and the position of his collarbones suggest that he had been wrapped in a shroud. DNA analysis revealed that this man was related to six other individuals nearby – the largest kinship group so far identified at the site – and his grave was positioned fairly centrally within this cluster, suggesting that it had been a focal point. Perhaps this was an individual of particularly high status – something that was suggested by his grave goods as well. SK176 had been interred with no fewer than six quartz pebbles, and he was found to be wearing a copper-alloy ring on the big toe of his right foot. This has been interpreted as a sign that he was buried wearing a single sandal – a familiar motif from medieval Irish literature, where it is associated with kingship and the otherworld. In poetic sources, the phrase fear an énais – ‘the man with one sandal’ – is used to signify an inaugurated member of the elite, or someone with a claim to such status.
From much later in the community’s history, we find another enigmatic item, in the burial of SK420. This individual was an adolescent, 12-14 years old when she died, and from her isotopic and genetic data we can tell that she had grown up locally and had blue eyes and blonde hair. She, too, had been buried with quartz pebbles (two, in this case), but less easy to interpret was the large piece of sawn antler that had been placed on her pelvis. As deer lose and renew their antlers annually, it is possible that this fragment had been placed as a symbol of resurrection – or, given its positioning, there may have been an association with fertility.
Double burials
The dead, of course, do not bury themselves, and the selection and placement of grave goods represent deliberate choices by the living community. Other insights into how the living viewed and interacted with the dead come from the way that people were arranged in their graves – not just in terms of the Christian traditions described above, but in the handful of double burials that have been identified at the site. A particularly poignant example is the grave of SK54 and SK55, who died in the mid-6th to mid-7th century. They were a girl of about 7.5-9.5 years and a boy aged around 3, and the older child had been placed on her right side, with her knees bent and her body curled around that of the toddler, who was lying on his back. Her forehead touched the side of the boy’s head, and her right arm was placed under his neck as if embracing him. If an accident or illness had caused the children’s untimely end, it had left no trace on their bones, but it is likely that both had died at the same time; perhaps the older child had been intended to protect the younger in the afterlife. Their positioning might suggest a close familial link, though aDNA indicates a more distant kinship: they were fourth-degree relatives, probably (given their proximity in age) first cousins once removed. We can also restore some details of the children in life: both had light brown hair, while the girl had brown eyes and the boy’s were blue.
Two more children buried together were SK99 and SK100, who had died in the mid-7th to mid-9th century. We do not know if they were blood relatives, but they, too, were tucked closely together. SK99 was aged around 7.5-9.5, while SK100 was much younger, perhaps 18 months old. The infant had been placed on the older child’s chest, with their head tucked under SK99’s chin, and they appear to have been wrapped in the same shroud.
A similar arrangement was found in the double burial of SK347 and SK348, where a baby of around 1.5 months had been placed on the torso of a young adult woman. Both had been suffering from poor health at the time of their death in the early 8th to early 10th century – the baby had both rickets and scurvy, while the woman had an active infection on her legs and feet. Their dual burial might suggest a maternal relationship, but DNA analysis revealed that the pair were not linked by blood.
The final pairing is strikingly different, comprising a young man and a younger male aged 16.5-20. They had died in the AD 430s-640s, and had been arranged in a close embrace with arms and legs entwined and the full length of their bodies touching. It is tempting to project romantic interpretations on to such burials, though they could also have been foster-brothers (often a close relationship as depicted in medieval literature) or otherwise intimate friends in life. DNA analysis suggests that they were first cousins, and, whatever the nature of their relationship, the community’s choice to bury them together, and in such a specific way, will have been full of cultural significance.
Violent stories
The daily activities by which this community sustained itself would have carried risks of work-related accidents, and while the Ranelagh skeletons did not show an unusual number of serious injuries, two men had suffered significant damage to one of their legs. This would have been immobilising for some time, and potentially permanently disabling, so the fact that both showed signs of healing, indicating that they had survived for some time afterwards, testifies to the level of care that they must have been given.
Not all interactions were so benevolent, however: where fatal injuries have been identified among the cemetery population, they are attributed not to accidents but to interpersonal violence. Seven individuals from the site, all of them male, had met particularly brutal ends, and, although only one weapon was found during the excavation (a leaf-shaped iron spearhead), violence appears to have been a recurring theme across the settlement’s lifespan, as their graves span the 5th to 10th centuries. Five of the individuals affected in this way had been decapitated, with the severing blow struck from behind while the victim’s neck was hyper-extended, suggesting that each had been kneeling with his head bowed. This might evoke images of clinically formal executions, but some of the skeletons speak of what can only be described as frenzied attacks.
The middle-aged SK242, for example, bore chop marks to his right forearm (severing the bone), right knee, right lower leg, and left ankle. If these wounds had not proved immediately fatal, then he had died by beheading (otherwise his head was removed after death), and charring on some of his bones indicates that his body was then set on fire. The young adult SK524, meanwhile, had also been decapitated, but his torso had been mutilated too, with the chest cut open and evidence that he had been disembowelled and possibly castrated. Might such acts of ‘overkill’ reflect a battlefield scenario, a savage act of vengeance, or perhaps a public demonstration of the overthrow of a powerful individual?
While the evidence for decapitation is clear, more unusual are the traces seen on three men’s crania: SK271 and SK290, both young adults, as well as the brutalised and burned SK242 all had distinctive unhealed injuries to the back of their head. Areas of bone had been shaved from the cranium, and it has been suggested that this reflects a form of scalping, perhaps removing a section of skin with a ponytail attached. Another middle-aged man, SK518, showed similar damage to his chin, perhaps removing his beard in the same way. The Irish sagas often place great emphasis on the length, style, and colour of a warrior’s hair when describing him; it appears to have been an important aspect of his prestige, and medieval law codes set out the appropriate compensation for damaging someone’s hair or facial hair. Might the wounds seen on these skulls be interpreted as a ritual humiliation of, or posthumous trophy-taking from, defeated foes? (Three of the four men had also been beheaded.)
Perhaps the most shocking to a modern audience, however, is the inclusion of a child among the decapitated individuals. SK449 was a young boy, aged around 7.5-9.5 years old when he died in AD 774-987. Children showing weapon injuries are not unprecedented in the archaeological record, but they are not common either – and, in fact, the early Irish law tracts are specific in the robust protections afforded to children of the time. It has been suggested that this boy may have been killed as revenge for the actions of a parent or other relative, or that he might have been the son of an important individual, and that his death might represent the breakdown of a hostage situation. He had, nonetheless, been laid to rest in a respectful way, lying on his back with his head replaced in the correct anatomical position and pointing to the west. He also had grave goods including a fragment of bracelet and a quartz stone, though the presence of a large, flat stone placed over his chest and left arm is more unusual – it is possible that his violent death was perceived as unjust, and this gesture was intended to prevent his angry spirit from rising again.
It is notable that, no matter the violence inflicted on these males at the end of their lives, all had been accorded a proper burial in the community cemetery. Because of this, the project team suggest it is unlikely that they were wrongdoers dispatched by the site’s inhabitants. Instead, they may have been put to death elsewhere – perhaps as the settlement’s growing prestige caused local or political rivalries to flare – and their bodies had subsequently been recovered and lovingly laid to rest by their families. The only burial on the site where evidence of ‘negative’ treatment has been observed is that of SK263, a young woman of around 17-23 years old, who had been heavily pregnant at the time of her death (her full-term baby was still in utero). She had been buried in an apparently casual manner, laid on the bottom of an enclosure ditch, and some of her bones had become dislodged and her head separated from her body, suggesting that, at best, she had only been partly covered with earth. It is unclear why this individual had been seemingly singled out for this treatment; somehow ‘different’ or as an outcast in her society.
SK263 was buried late in the site’s life, c.1150-1410; by this time, productive activity had largely ceased and many of the ditches had been backfilled. Why had had the fortunes of an apparently influential centre fallen so dramatically? The answer, the project team suggest, lies in the religious and political changes that had been gradually taking hold in medieval Ireland. As the Christian church became more socially influential from the 8th century onwards, ringforts and other enclosed secular settlements were slowly abandoned and proto-towns and new centres of production and trade instead grew up around ecclesiastical sites. Some of the old enclosures continued for a while as cemeteries – perhaps driven by a continued association with ancestors or a community’s sense of identity – and perhaps it was a forced break in these longstanding links, whether due to territorial reorganisation, political upheaval, or simply changing social emphasis, that ended even this final function, and caused the Ranelagh site to fade into obscurity once more.
Source:
Shane Delaney is a Senior Archaeologist with IAC Archaeology.
Eileen Murphy is Professor of Archaeology at Queen’s University Belfast.
Martin Jones is an Archaeologist with Transport Infrastructure Ireland.
Further reading:
Shane Delaney and Eileen Murphy (2022) The Forgotten Cemetery: excavations at Ranelagh, Co Roscommon (Wordwell Books, ISBN 987-1911633341, €25; also available to read for free online at http://www.tii.ie/technical-services/archaeology/publications/tii-heritage/TheForgottenCemetery.pdf.
There is an accompanying StoryMap at https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/0abac355011e4b92b8624fdaa5e3cf9a.
All images: IAC Archaeology, Muireann Ni Cheallachain, and Shane Delaney and Libby Mulqueeny
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