^{page 1 note 1} It is understood that recent gold analyses by Hartmann have suggested that the material of Irish gold objects was not native gold; Celticum, xii (1965), 27Google Scholar; Germania, xlvi (1968), 1Google Scholar.

^{page 1 note 2} This Society had Sir William Petty as its first President. Its meetings were conducted on the style of the Royal and Oxford Societies, with which it corresponded. Two Minute-books are at the British Museum, and it was under the auspices of some of its members that Edward Lhuyd visited Ireland in 1699 and 1700. See Wilde, W. R., PRIA, iii (1845–7), 160Google Scholar.

^{page 2 note 1} Ordnance Survey of Ireland Six-Inch Sheets 4 and 5, Queen's County. The account is taken from TCD MS. F. 1. 20, ff. 71–2 (see JRSAI, v (1859–9), 207Google Scholar; JRSAI, xxx (1900), 10Google Scholar), and is a number of depositions presumably taken at an early treasure-trove case. The association of a torque and a neckring would parallel the Enniscorthy find; see Eogan, G., JRSAI, xcvii (1967), 129Google Scholar.

^{page 2 note 2} Wood-Martin, W. G., Pagan Ireland (London, 1895), p. 483Google Scholar.

^{page 2 note 3} Little is known of the later history of this object, except that it was taken to Champagne in France by a member of the Comerford family and lost.

^{page 2 note 4} The Bishop of Derry mentioned in this account was Ezekiel Hopkins, who was bishop of Raphoe, the diocese in which Ballyshannon is situated, from 1670 to 1681, and of Derry from 1681 to 1690, the year of his death. At the time of the siege of Derry in 1689, he went to London, and became preacher to the Church of St. Mary Aldermanbury. He most probably told this story to Gibson, later Bishop of London, during his stay there; UJA iv (1856), 164Google Scholar; DNB. Gibson also acknowledged the help of Sir Richard Cox with his additions for Ireland.

The edition appears to have been carelessly prepared; see Gunther, R. T., Life and Letters of Edward Lhuyd (Oxford, 1945)Google Scholar, passim.

^{page 2 note 5} I wish to record my thanks to the Council of the Society of Antiquaries of London, for permission to consult their Minute-books and other records of the Society, and to Mr. J. H. Hopkins, the Librarian, for considerable help while I was working on them.

^{page 3 note 1} An Account of Some Antiquities found in Ireland; communicated by the Right Reverend Richard Pococke, late Lord Bishop of Meath, referred to below as Irish Antiquities. See below, p. 12, n. 2.

^{page 3 note 2} Irish Antiquities, p. 40.

^{page 3 note 3} Foster, I. Ll. and Alcock, L. ed., Culture and Environment, Essays in Honour of Sir Cyril Fox (London, 1963), p. 193Google Scholar.

^{page 3 note 4} The contraction after 4 is, unfortunately, illegible.

^{page 4 note 1} JRSAI, lxxv (1945), 105Google Scholar. The reference given: Archaeologia, ii (1773), 62Google Scholar, footnote a makes no reference to this horn.

^{page 4 note 2} Coles, J. M., PPS, xxix (1963), no. 16b, fig. 1Google Scholar.

^{page 4 note 3} In a book of sketches kept by Sir William Betham, National Library of Ireland MS. 1545a, f. 64; the findplace, Griffinrath, is within a few miles of Maynooth. See p. 18, note 4.

^{page 4 note 4} The Minute-book of this Society is now in the library of the Royal Irish Academy: MS. 24 E 28.

^{page 4 note 5} A reference by Dr. Charles Smith to what may be ancient gold objects is given in his History of Kerry, pp. 186–7. Referring to the fortification made by the Spaniards in 1575 at Dún-an-Óir, near Smerwick, on the Dingle peninsula, and a tradition that they buried treasure there, he continues: ‘It is certain, that a few years ago, several corslets of pure gold were discovered on the lands of Clonties, near a small chapel which the Spaniards had erected, about a mile from the fort; part of which came to the share of William Mullens, Esq; on whose estate they were found by the country people, as they were trenching potatoes: his proportion of the gold was worth 26L. sterling.’ Though Smith may have thought these objects Spanish, they might conceivably have been analogues of the Mold tippet (p. 17, n. 5 below). I am indebted to Mr. Paul Ashbee, who pointed out to me a reference to this find and to Smith's record of it in Walker's Irish Dress, pp. 186–7. In the same work, Walker gives an account written by W. C. Gumbleton of what appears to be a similar object found near his home at Lismore in Co. Waterford, which was sold to a Cork goldsmith: ‘It is certain a gold… Corselet… was found in a small coppice near my brother's house about seventy years since and sold for 600L. to a gold-smith at Cork, whose name cannot at present be learned. The … Corselet answers the description of an entire covering for the body, beginning at the neck, terminating at the hips, and closing behind with three clasps; but whether it was plain gold, done in relief, or merely engraved, I cannot satisfy myself.’ (pp. 113, 177).

The price paid in Cork suggests that the object weighed upwards of 150 ozs. It may have been another spectacular analogue of the Mold tippet. Walker, J. C., An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish (Dublin, 1788)Google Scholar.

^{page 5 note 1} An enlightened government awarded Harris pension in 1748 to enable him to carry on his historical researches; Falkiner, C. L., Illustrations of Irish History (London, 1904), p. xiGoogle Scholar; DNB.

^{page 5 note 2} See JRSAI, xxii (1892), 13, 126Google Scholar.

^{page 5 note 3} Rutty, J., An Essay towards the Natural History of the County of Dublin, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1772)Google Scholar. Some biographical details of Rutty are given by Frazer, in UJA, 2nd series, ix (1903), 143Google Scholar.

^{page 5 note 4} Simon, J., An Essay towards an Historical Account of Irish Coins (Dublin, 1750)Google Scholar.

^{page 7 note 1} This communication was published in PRIA, viii (1861–4), 82Google Scholar, but with only a few very poor illustrations.

^{page 7 note 2} Armstrong, E. C. R., Catalogue of Irish Gold Ornaments in the Collection of the Royal Irish Academy, 2nd edn. (Dublin, 1933), pl. xv, p. 276Google Scholar.

^{page 7 note 3} Recently presented to the National Museum of Ireland.

^{page 7 note 4} Irish Antiquities, pl. iii, 1.

^{page 7 note 5} Ibid., pl. iii, 2.

^{page 7 note 6} Ordnance Survey Six Inch Sheets 42, 43, Co. Meath. The townland of Agher is close to that of Dangan, which consists of the grounds of Dangan Castle, in which there are many eighteenth-century works, including an embankment, a grotto, and a canal.

^{page 7 note 7} Eogan, G., Catalogue of Irish Bronze Swords Dublin, 1965), no. 54Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr. Eogan, who discussed this drawing with me.

^{page 9 note 1} These objects, found in a Roman camp on Blackheath, were exhibited by Mr. Sarjent. They appear to have been of glass or some similar material, with twists of gold wire in the central perforation, but they are not like Pococke's hairrings.

^{page 9 note 2} This refers to Simon's fibulae from Co. Louth, pl. vi.

^{page 9 note 3} See Armstrong's Catalogue, pl. xiv.

^{page 9 note 4} For Bronze Age burials excavated near this place see Prendergast, E., JRSAI, lxxv (1945), 107Google Scholar.

^{page 10 note 1} Pownall, T., Archaeologia, iii (1775), 368Google Scholar. See Wallace, J. N. A., North Munster Antiquarian Journal, i (1938), 89Google Scholar.

^{page 10 note 2} See p. 5, n. 1. Harris was called to the Bar in 1713, and would thus be known as ‘Counsellor Harris’.

^{page 10 note 3} Campbell, , A Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland (London, 1777), opp. p. 160Google Scholar.

^{page 11 note 1} Smith, C., The Antient and Present State of the County and City of Waterford (Dublin, 1746), pp. 97Google Scholar, 98, 353. Ordnance Survey of Ireland Six-Inch Sheet 17, Co. Waterford. The name Lisnakill appears to be a corruption of the Irish Lios na Cille, the church fort.

^{page 12 note 1} Inventaria Archaeologica, GB 26. Henshall and Wallace have noted the oblique nicks along the edges of the pair of armlets from Migdale, another point of comparison with this Irish example: PS AS, xcvi (1962–3), 150Google Scholar.

^{page 12 note 2} Several similar marginal notes in the same hand can be found in the Minutes. These were probably made by or for Gough, when he was collecting information for his edition of Camden's Britannia (1789).

It was presumably Gough, who, as Director, added the paragraph describing the Whitfield armlet at the end of Pococke's Irish Antiquities in the second edition of Archaeologia, ii, published in 1809 (p. 41). Indeed, as Pococke's article was published eight years after his death in 1765, and as there is no mention of his reading a paper on this subject before the Society, I am strongly of the opinion that Gough may even have compiled the version published in the first edition of 1773. In his edition of Camden (1789), Gough duplicates the Whitfield find by giving the version from the Minutes on p. 476, and a version of Smith's description on p. 513, as if these were separate discoveries.

^{page 13 note 1} See O'Conor, C., Studies, xxxviii (1949), 325Google Scholar; also Price, L., Austin Cooper, An Eighteenth-Century Antiquary (Dublin, 1942)Google Scholar; Wilde, W. R., JRSAI, xi (1870), pp. 33Google Scholar, etc. Many unpublished drawings by Beranger are now in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy; see Herity, M., Studia Hibernica, vii (1967), 127Google Scholar. Referring to a fibula in the possession of Sir Capel Molyneux, Thomas Campbell records that ‘the Rev. Mr. Archdall shewed me casts in lead of several of them, which had been in the possession of Dr. Pococke, … some of which were so small that the little cups or bell-like figures at the ends touched each other; and he had some without cups at all’: A Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland (London, 1777)Google Scholar. Archdall's collection was presented to the R.I.A. on 16th November 1791.

^{page 14 note 1} It was thus presumably sent to the Society's house, as Sandes was one of the draughtsmen to the Society at this period.

^{page 14 note 2} An abridged version of the Revd. Mr. Armstrong's Catalogue, who was residing at Tipperary, the basis of that given in Pownall, is given by Thomas Campbell (op. cit., p. 467). Campbell mentions that there were a number of ‘antique curiosities’ in Armstrong's Library; it is possible that some of these were the objects described in his Catalogue.

^{page 14 note 3} John Leland's Itinerary in Wales, written about 1549, records destruction of this kind in Anglesey; quoted in Hemp, W. J., Archaeologia, lxxxv (1935), 254Google Scholar. Evidence of agriculture found on the pre-bog surface in counties Meath and Mayo is given in Young's Tour, pp. 30, 390. The second reference gives an account by Mr. French of Moniva of methods of bog reclamation begun in 1744. This won him a gold medal of the Royal Dublin Society. The R.D.S., which encouraged improved methods of husbandry, was instrumental preserving some of the antiquities found in the course of reclamation work in its museum: Young, Arthur, A Tour in Ireland (Dublin, 1780)Google Scholar. I wish to thank Caoimhín Ó Danachair, Irish Folklore Commission, who drew my attention to the reference in Young, p. 30.

^{page 14 note 4} The drawing is given in Walter Harris's edition of Ware's works, Dublin, 1764, pl. 1, no. 9, p. 145.

^{page 15 note 1} Boate/Molyneux, A Natural History of Ireland in Three Parts (Dublin, 1726), p. 201Google Scholar; fig. vi.

^{page 15 note 2} Ibid., p. 199.

^{page 15 note 3} Ibid., p. 183–5. See Gough's Camden, p. 607.

^{page 15 note 4} Op. cit., 151.

^{page 15 note 5} See p. 12, n. 1.

^{page 15 note 6} Op. cit., 145. Dr. Henshall has kindly drawn my attention to a somewhat similar armlet, with ribs outlined by dotting, but without the lozenge-shaped bosses, found on the Caistor Wolds in Lincolnshire; Arch. Journ. xiv (1857), 92Google Scholar; xc (1933). pl. xv.

^{page 16 note 1} Powell, T. G. E., JRSAI, lxxi (1941), 9Google Scholar.

^{page 16 note 2} PPS, vii (1942), 142Google Scholar.

^{page 16 note 3} Archaeologia xii (1796), 414Google Scholar and pl. li, fig. 8, where the object is identified as ‘a Druid's hook, for gathering mistletoe’. The drawing in Archaeologia is reproduced by Hencken, H. O'N., The Archaeology of Cornwall and Scilly (London, 1932)Google Scholar, fig. 24.

Edward King gives some additional information in a contemporary account of the find, which, he says, was in the possession of Philip Rashleigh, on whose estate it was discovered:

‘About the year 1795, in Cornwall, there was dug up from the depth of sixty feet below the surface, in searching for a new tin mine, between Fowey and Lostwithiel, a curious long slender hook of hard metal, covered with a substance resembling gold, and chased, in part, like a snake's skin; and having a regular handle; at the end of which a fine piece of amber was well set…’; Munimenta Antiqua, i (London, 1799), p. 99Google Scholar.

^{page 17 note 1} Gimbutas, M., Bronze Age Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe (The Hague, 1965), 276–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

^{page 17 note 2} Ibid., pl. 48, 12.

^{page 17 note 3} Schránil, J., Vorgeschichte Böhmens und Mährens (Berlin, 1928)Google Scholar, Taf. xxv, 14.

^{page 17 note 4} Piggott, S., Neolithic Cultures of the British Isles (Cambridge, 1954), figs. 55, 63Google Scholar. The problem of a group whose elements are distributed in two widely separated areas may be resolved by regarding the areas as each having received a separate impetus from a common source somewhere to the east, possibly from the region from the mouth of the Elbe to north Jutland. Piggott's Rinyo-Clacton Culture would then take on an altered cultural meaning with an Early to Middle Bronze Age date. My colleague, Miss Rhoda Kavanagh, with whom I have discussed this question, confirms the late date suggested here for Skara Brae from a study of the encrustation of some of the pottery from that site, which she would compare with Irish Encrusted Urns. She intends shortly to publish her views on this problem in an article on these Urns. See Arnal, J., Palaeohistoria, xii (1966), fig. 4Google Scholar, for bone pins of similar type in the south of France.

^{page 17 note 5} PPS, xix (1953)Google Scholar, pl. xxvi and fig. 3.

^{page 17 note 6} Butler's recognition of the analogy between the clay disc from the Bognaesgaard tomb in Jutland and the gold sundiscs from Wexford on the south-east corner of Ireland is a further indication of early recognition of Ireland's wealth in gold; Palaeohistoria, ix (1963), 171Google Scholar.

^{page 17 note 7} Schránil, op. cit., Taf. xviii; xix.

^{page 18 note 1} See p. 13, n. 1.

^{page 18 note 2} See p. 7, n. 2.

^{page 18 note 3} The Gentleman's Magazine (1748), pp. 301–2 contains a short account of Sloane's Collection, but no mention is made of archaeological objects.

^{page 18 note 4} The author has found two sketchbooks kept by Sir William Betham, Ulster King-at-Arms, in the National Library of Ireland (MSS. 4458 and 1545 a); the drawing in pl. 11 is taken from the second of these. It is proposed to publish these drawings as a representative collection of an Irish antiquary's sketches of the period 1825–40, which immediately preceded the building-up of the Royal Irish Academy's collections, now housed in the National Museum.

^{page 18 note 5} JRSAI, xcvii (1967), 113Google Scholar.

^{page 18 note 6} See p. 12, n. 2.

^{page 19 note 1} Cowen, J. D., PPS, xxxiii (1967), 378Google Scholar.

^{page 19 note 2} One of the sources for this Classical model, with the works of Camden and Olaus Wormius, and a very typical seventeenth-century antiquarian work, is Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Burials which, with his short work on The Brompton Urns, can be found in Keynes, , The Works of Sir Thomas Browne (London, 1964.Google Scholar)

^{page 19 note 3} Petrie, G., The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland (Dublin 1845), pp. 3–4Google Scholar. With the help of John O' Donovan, Petrie had a similar success in identifying the remains in Tara with the Dindseanchus account in his Essay on the Antiquities of Tara Hill (Dublin, 1839)Google Scholar. The uncritical use of this model to interpret prehistoric material played Petrie's successors false, however.

^{page 19 note 4} I am indebted to Professor Francis Byrne of U.C.D., who has pointed out to me that Dr. Geoffrey Keating (c. 1570–1644), the Irish writer, had, a century earlier, referred to the Druid tradition in his Foras Feasa (c. 1633–4). It is probable that Keating was drawing on biblical and Classical sources, and on the continental learning of his day, for the interpretation given in the second part of the following extract:

‘There are indeed to be found to-day in many places in Ireland archaeological relics dating from pagan times; these are numerous very broad stone flags, with stone pillars supporting them, and they are called in the old books idol altars, while the ordinary people call them Beds of the Fianna, not knowing for what they were intended. It was on these altars that the Druids carried out their sacrifices in olden times as well as killing their bulls, their he-goats and their rams, while the Druids themselves crept on their knees under the blood spilt from the sacrifice, in order to cleanse themselves from the stain of their sins, just as the High-Priest used to do in the midst of the Jewish people, when he proceeded under the sacrificial bridge, allowing the blood of the sacrifice flow over him, from which he was called pontifex, that is, the bridge-maker.’

Bergin, O., Sgéalaigheacht Chéitinn, Stories from Keating's History of Ireland (Dublin, 1925), p. 24Google Scholar. This reference appears to have escaped Kendrick's notice; The Druids (London, 1927)Google Scholar, passim.

^{page 20 note 1} One of the greatest tragedies for the development of Irish antiquarian thought was the death of Edward Lhuyd in 1709, before he was able to complete the second volume of his Archaeologia Britannica, which was to have contained the Irish archaeological information gathered by himself and his assistants, Jones and Wyn, on his visits of 1699 and 1700. What remains of this material indicates that if the publication had been issued it would have enjoyed at least the status of Camden's Britannia and have eclipsed the Boate/Molyneux Natural History of Ireland, which went into a second edition in 1755. It would probably have been a significant formative influence on archaeological thought in the eighteenth century, the equal of Camden and Wormius in the seventeenth.

^{page 20 note 2} In Boate/Molyneux, op. cit., p. 163.

^{page 20 note 3} Very small archaeological collections existed in the Dublin institutions before 1840. The Molyneux Collection, which was at Trinity College, Dublin, early in the eighteenth century, appears to have been lost before a second influx of material came in after 1770. There was also a collection of the Royal Dublin Society, amalgamated with that of the Royal Irish Academy in the nineteenth century. The R.I.A. collection was begun in 1785 with the acquisition of a pottery vessel from Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, but interest died after the Act of Union of 1800, when many of the noblemen who had been patrons of antiquarian work left Dublin. The gift of antiquities sent by the king of Denmark as a mark of Thomsen's work lay unopened till much later, when interest bourgeoned again, and the Underwood Collection and the Tara Torques were acquired in the late 1830s.

^{page 21 note 1} A gold ‘breast plate’ found near Feakle in Co. Clare, weighing over 12 ounces, was bought in Limerick in 1797 at £3. 8s. 3d. an ounce and resold in Dublin at £4. an ounce. R. Ousely, TRIA, vi (1797), 32.

^{page 21 note 2} Joan Evans quotes Pitt-Rivers on the value of everyday evidence: ‘The value of relics, viewed as evidence, may… be said to be in inverse ratio to their intrinsic value’, and comments: ‘His chief principle was that all objects were of equal interest to the archaeologist; he finally exorcised the ghost of Taste’; A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), p. 341Google Scholar. See Daniel, G. E., The Idea of Prehistory (London, 1962), p. 74Google Scholar.