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Recent LiDAR work intended to record the state of the landscape in Baltinglass, Ireland, has revealed a complex of five Neolithic cursus monuments, shedding new light on the importance of the area during this period.
The archaeological landscape of Baltinglass in County Wicklow is characterised by monuments from the Early Neolithic and Late Bronze Age periods, and has even been nicknamed ‘Ireland’s Hillfort Capital’. Until now, evidence of Middle Neolithic activity has been a rarity, leading to an assumption that the area had been abandoned during the 2,000 years covered by this period. The new LiDAR work, undertaken by Bluesky as part of a project funded by the Department of Housing, Local Government, and Heritage under the Community Monuments Fund, has revealed hundreds of new monuments in the area. These range from prehistoric barrows to early medieval ringforts, many of which can be identified and broadly dated due to their morphology.
Perhaps the most exciting of these discoveries is the complex of five cursus monuments, which dates to the Middle Neolithic period and therefore calls for a reassessment of the theory that Baltinglass was abandoned by its prehistoric inhabitants at this time. Not only does the presence of the monuments suggest continuous habitation in the area, but the complex is also one of the largest examples found in Britain and Ireland, and puts Baltinglass on the map as an area of high importance during the Middle Neolithic period.
Cursus monuments usually take the form of long, narrow earthwork enclosures. They began to appear from around 3500 BC, following on from a tradition of earlier causewayed enclosures. The purpose of these monuments has not been easy to ascertain, partly owing to a lack of material culture present in the monuments, and many theories have been suggested. In a recent Antiquity paper on the newly discovered monuments, James O’Driscoll from Glasgow University has suggested that they could be considered ‘routes for the dead’, directing the traveller to their final resting place.
This link between the monuments and the dead is made clear by the proximity of cursus enclosures to burial sites. At least three of the five cursus structures at Baltinglass are aligned with noteworthy burial complexes. The significance of this is further exemplified by the placement of the burial site between the cursus monument and the sun as it rises during the summer solstice or the autumnal equinox. O’Driscoll suggests that the link between the monuments and solar movements, also present at prehistoric sites such as Stonehenge, could be connected to seasonal farming, which has in turn been linked to the cycle of life and death.
Funding by the Royal Irish Academy will allow O’Driscoll, along with Steven Davis of University College Dublin and Donald Murphy of Archaeological Consultancy Services, to excavate the best preserved of the five cursus monuments, which is located on Keadeen Mountain in the east of the region. O’Driscoll said they will be using the opportunity to ‘throw as much science at the monument as possible in order to understand its date, construction and function’. To date, the only excavated cursus monument in Ireland is that of Newgrange, and O’Driscoll hopes that the new excavations ‘will be the start of a broader project on cursus monuments in Ireland’.
Deidre Burns, Heritage Officer at Wicklow County Council, also noted the potential pathways opened up by the discoveries: ‘Such information will help us better to preserve and manage these monuments, and will inform future presentation and dissemination of this landscape to both academic and public audiences,’ she stated.
The Antiquity article can be accessed online at http://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/exploring-the-baltinglass-cursus-complex-routes-for-the-dead/81B05D3592918A99143EAE71B083B436.
Text: Rebecca Preedy / Image: James O’Driscoll
