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A Burial with Faience Beads at Tara
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 May 2014
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The discovery, in the course of the 1955 excavations at Tara, of a necklace which included segmented faience beads around the neck of an inhumed burial is the first recorded instance in Ireland of the occurrence of beads of this type with such a burial. It is, in fact, only the second case in which faience beads of any kind are known to have been found in a grave in this country. Since the discovery is so unusual and because of its implications for prehistoric trade and cultural connexions, it seems fitting that a brief account in advance of the full excavation report, should be offered for inclusion in this volume in honour of Professor Childe, one of whose most significant contributions to the study of prehistory has been to indicate such ancient contacts between different areas and to emphasize their significance.
Excavations at Tara began in 1952. In that year and in 1953 work was carried out on the site known as the Rath of the Synods. In 1955 work was resumed at Tara—this time on the burial mound called the Mound of the Hostages. This site is ascribed to Cormac Mac Airt, King at Tara in the 3rd century of the Christian era. To Cormac also are attributed the building of others of the Tara monuments, including the most important of them—the Fort of the Kings and the Banquet Hall—and in general Cormac looms large in the scribal accounts of Tara. The 1955 excavation showed that the Mound of the Hostages was certainly not built in the 3rd century A.D.
- Type
- Bronze Age
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1956
References
page 163 note 1 The names of the various sites at Tara are derived from the topographical tract known as the Dinnshenchas, the earliest compilation of which has been dated to about A.D. 1000. It is convenient to refer to the monuments under these names; doubts as to the accuracy of the Dinnshenchas and the difficulty of correlating the names in it with the extant earthworks are briefly set out in Ríordáin, Ó: Tara, the Monuments on the Hill (Dundalk, 1954)Google Scholar.
page 163 note 2 For doubts as to Cormac's historical authenticity see O'Rahilly, , Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin, 1946)Google Scholar.
page 163 note 3 Chapter heading in his Tara, A Pagan Sanctuary of Ancient Ireland, London, 1931Google Scholar.
page 164 note 1 The position of the skeleton here is rather similar to that of one in Barrow 3 at Radley, Berkshire, excavated by Mr R. J. C. Atkinson who briefly discusses burials with ‘limbs extended or only partially flexed’ (Oxoniensia, 17–18 (1952–1953Google Scholar, 24) and the grave-goods found with them. These are flat, riveted bronze knife-daggers, perforated stone battle-axes, and jet buttons and rings with V-borings—types which occur elsewhere with necked Beakers.
Miss D. M. Hunter, Falkirk, who is studying such burials has kindly sent me the list which she has compiled. The grave-goods include necked Beakers and Food-Vessels. In relation to the Tara burial it is interesting to note that the items of most frequent occurrence are bronze blades (knife-daggers or daggers, usually the former); jet is found in two (possibly four) instances while amber, faience or glass are noted in two doubtful cases only.
page 166 note 1 Miss M. Scannell of the Natural History Section of the National Museum reports as follows:— ‘The material appears to be of a chitinous nature; it is probably part of the exoskeleton of an insect’.
page 167 note 1 Childe, , Prehistoric Communities, 154Google Scholar, gives numerous references, but the blades are in general larger and of different form.
page 167 note 2 The material is mainly unpublished, but a photograph of the grave which contained the bronze blade is given in the Report on the National Museum of Ireland, 1928–1929, pl. 4; see also p. 11.
page 168 note 1 Piggott, , P.P.S., 4, 1938Google Scholar, fig. 13: A4.
page 168 note 2 e.g. P.P.S., 4, 1938, 70Google Scholar, fig. 8.
page 169 note 1 Anderson, Joseph in P.S.A.S., 35, 1900–1907, 266–75Google Scholar.
page 169 note 2 Mr R. J. C. Atkinson has kindly examined the Migdale bronze beads for me, and writes that they ‘certainly have wooden cores, which are still in position in at least half of them … so far as I can see the axial perforation is natural, presumably the pith core of a twig (of ? hazel) …’
I am grateful to Mr Atkinson for this information about the Migdale beads and to him and to Mr T. G. E. Powell for references to Continental examples of tubular beads.
page 169 note 3 P.P.S., 19, 1953, 170Google Scholar.
page 169 note 4 Curwen, , Archaeology of Sussex, London, 1954, 150Google Scholar and pl. XI. The find-place is Beggars Haven, 5 miles NW of Brighton. There were two tubular beads and also beads of lignite.
page 169 note 5 Arch., 85, 1935, 213Google Scholar.
page 169 note 6 Bronze Age Pottery, Oxford, 1912, 11, 39Google Scholar.
page 169 note 7 I am grateful to Mr John Brailsford of the British Museum for the following note on the Dorset beads:— ‘I can only find, in our records, one of the two bronze cylinders mentioned by Abercromby. This is the Roke Down one, registration number 92, 9–1, 226. It is described in the register as “bronze narrow tubular bead, made of thin leaf, length, .95 inches”. This is also described in Payne, 's Catalogue of the Durden Collection (p. 15Google Scholar, No. 13) as “resembling a lace-tag with corrugated surface”. Plate V, No. 12 in this Catalogue shows it as being of the same form as the segmented faience beads’.
page 169 note 8 Mr Powell sends me a sketch done from a bead in Straubing museum. The bead (about 4 inches in length) is very large in comparison with the Tara ones.
page 169 note 9 Pittioni, , Urgeschichte des Osterreichlichen Raumes, 1954, p. 325Google Scholar, fig. 228.
page 169 note 10 Bohm, , Die Ältere Bronzezeit in der Mark Brandenburg, 1935, p. 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar and fig. 16, no. 9.
page 169 note 11 Armstrong, , Catalogue of Gold Ornaments, Dublin, 1920, p. 90Google Scholar, no. 387, noted by Powell, , P.P.S., 19, 1953, 170Google Scholar.
page 170 note 1 Arch., 85, 1935, 213–14Google Scholar, and pl. LXVI.
page 170 note 2 ibid, 213 and pl. LXV: 2.
page 171 note 1 Hartnett, , J.R.S.A.I., 83, 1953, 49Google Scholar. Bead illustrated on pl. VII.
page 171 note 2 Piggott, , P.P.S., 1938, 70Google Scholar, fig. 8, 13, and Childe, , Prehistoric Communities, 139Google Scholar, fig. 4 to 12.
page 171 note 3 Arch., 85, 1935, 215, 216Google Scholar.
page 172 note 1 Arch., 43, 495Google Scholar.
page 172 note 2 The list is based on that in Beck, and Stone, , Arch., 85, 1935, 234 ff.Google Scholar; there is no additional Irish find-place in Stone's supplementary list, Ant. Jour., 31, 1951, 30Google Scholar.
page 172 note 3 Hartnett, and Prendergast, , J.R.S.A.I., 83, 1953, 55Google Scholar. The beads are in private possession.
page 172 note 4 Beck and Stone, op. cit., 251.
page 172 note 5 J.R.S.A.I., 15, 1879–1982, 446Google Scholar. There were two cist-graves and the description is not clear as to the precise associations.
page 172 note 6 Table of associations in Arch., 85, 1935. 215Google Scholar; necklace from North Molton, Devon in Ant. J., 31, 1951, 25 ffGoogle Scholar. and additional finds p. 30.
page 172 note 7 Arch., 31, 1951Google Scholar, pl. 66; 1.
page 172 note 8 Prehistoric Migrations in Europe, Oslo, 1950Google Scholar, and The Dawn of European Civilization, London, 4th edition, 1947Google Scholar.
page 172 note 9 Prehistoric Europe: The Economic Basis, London, 1953, esp. pp. 266–9Google Scholar, with map, fig. 145, p. 267.
page 173 note 1 Ríordáin, Ó in P.R.I.A., 56C, 1954, esp. pp. 354–8Google Scholar; with analysis and remarks by Dr Stone, who found them to be morphologically very similar to Egyptian glass beads of the 14th century B.C. but dissimilar in composition.
page 173 note 2 The cave at Treille (Mailhac, Aude) produced not only glass beads but also a faience spacer bead, op. cit., p. 356.
page 173 note 3 Note added in proof: Since this paper was written another faience bead from Ireland has come to notice. It was discovered in the excavation of a megalithic tomb of entrance-grave type at Harristown, Co. Waterford (Hawkes, J., J.R.S.A.I., 71, 1941, 140)Google Scholar. The bead, a bone pin with perforated head, and a bronze blade were found with a secondary burial in a cordoned urn decorated with cord impressions. The bead was published as a sandstone bead but Professor Piggott recognized its similarity in form to quoit-shaped faience beads, and at his suggestion it was examined by Dr Stone who states that the material (obscured by a calcareous surface deposit) is almost certainly the same ‘glassy faience’ as found in the Tara beads.