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REVIEW BY CH
Engagingly written and well-illustrated, Building on the Past discusses the results of 20 archaeological excavations undertaken on a 17km stretch of the N2/M2 road corridor between Finglas, Co. Dublin, and Ashbourne, Co. Meath. The works were carried out in 2004-2005, and some of their discoveries have already been published elsewhere (in summary or in full), but this book provides the all-important overview, bringing the project’s various aspects together as an insightful, very readable whole. It is written by Finola O’Carroll, who was Senior Archaeologist for Cultural Resource Development Services (CRDS) Ltd, the company that carried out the investigations, together with a number of other expert contributions. The text begins by setting out the project’s geographical context, then succinctly summarises its main discoveries, spanning prehistory to the post-medieval period.
Subsequent chapters dig more deeply into particular periods and highlight especially interesting finds. These include a Neolithic enclosure whose ditch was found to contain deposits of deliberately placed cattle bone, arranged in a single layer. Representing at least 58 mature/semi-mature animals, the carcasses had been carefully dismembered and defleshed, with clear signs of butchery and scraping on their bones, and they are interpreted as evidence of major feasts or other ceremonial activity having taken place on the site. The cattle remains are intriguing finds in their own right, but the book adds value by using them as a springboard for thought-provoking digressions on ideas of feasting and animal sacrifice in the wider ancient world, and the Neolithic use of cattle for meat, milk, and traction.
Bronze Age highlights, meanwhile, include four locations containing burials, as well as a number of burnt mounds and features interpreted as the remains of a sweat-lodge or sauna hut. This period has also produced a large, deep waterhole that was found to contain 131 bundles of twigs, around 20 in each, which had been carefully trimmed using a flat metal tool and bound together at one end. As Caitríona Moore and Ingelise Stuijts note in a section focusing more closely on these enigmatic items, they were clearly ‘made to a practised and uniform pattern’, but their purpose is obscure.
The Iron Age finds are especially illuminating, adding extensive and diverse settlement to what O’Carroll acknowledges was a previously patchy picture. Remains representing this period were identified on nine sites across the road scheme, and they include evidence of ironworking and other industrial activity, as well as more everyday subsistence tasks. There are burials, too, the most striking of which was that of a woman, laid to rest on her side in a crouched position, who was found to be wearing copper-alloy rings on her toes. Two such ornaments were on her right foot – one was particularly large, its spiral design wrapping around her big toe and the toe next to it – while a third ring is thought to have been worn on her left foot and is also large enough to have encircled multiple digits. Where known from other Irish sites, rings like these are associated with high-status individuals, O’Carroll notes.
Moving into the medieval period, the project revealed three Anglo-Norman settlements, as well as an early medieval ‘cemetery settlement’, one of the largest and most complex sites unearthed by the road scheme. It began as a burial ground spanning AD 400-950 (the graves of 130 men, women, and children were excavated, though it is estimated that the wider cemetery could have contained 300) and was joined by features associated more with the activities of the living from AD 600. This site has been fully published elsewhere, so is only summarised in the account given in this book, but its is nevertheless an illuminating addition to the project’s story.
Concluding with an exploration of a prosperous 17th-century farmer’s house, this book covers an impressive span of time and range of archaeological features: testament to how much information large-scale infrastructure projects can reveal about the landscapes in which they lie.
Building on the Past: Archaeological investigations on the N2/M2 Finglas to Ashbourne road project
Finola O’Carroll
Transport Infrastructure Ireland, €25
ISBN 978-1911633419
