An ancient land of beauty

The inspiring nature of the Burren and the Aran Islands is captured in the rugged archaeology of the region, writes Joyce Hickey…

The inspiring nature of the Burren and the Aran Islands is captured in the rugged archaeology of the region, writes Joyce Hickey

For centuries, the extraordinary calcified landscape of the Burren and the spare majesty of the Aran Islands have inspired artists, antiquarians, geologists, archaeologists and writers. The two areas are linked geologically, part of a massive limestone plateau formed when sediments built up in a tropical sea that covered the region during the Carboniferous period around 340 million years ago. There are also many archaeological similarities, with a strong sense of this conveyed when you stand on the ramparts of Caher Dubh, at the west of the Burren, and look across the ocean at the Aran Islands.

In the 17th century Roderic O'Flaherty wrote about the stone forts on the islands, and after a gap of about 100 years there was renewed interest in the form of detailed study by renowned antiquarians including Petrie, O'Donovan, Wakeman, Wilde and Westropp.

Writers including W.B. Yeats and J. M. Synge were drawn to the region, imagining it as the stage for a type of western Irishness that involved heroic, stoic peasants eking out a living from their unforgiving surroundings. The "well of the four beauties" on Inis Mór, whose water is supposed to cure blindness, is featured in Synge's play The Well of the Saints.

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In more recent times, the Tír Eolas volumes The Book of the Burren (1992) and The Book of Aran (1994) have added to the canon, while Tim Robinson's informative folding landscapes maps and particularly his Stones of Aran books Pilgrimage (1990) and Labyrinth (1997) are essential reading for anyone interested in the area.

For me, the Aran Islands are captured in an unforgettable UCD archaeological society field trip in 1992. There is no better way to explore Inis Mór and its inspiring ancient architecture than getting lost down laneways and stumbling across forgotten monuments, or pedalling along with a whooping group. The damp wind whipping Jim Higgins's words away as he explained the intricacies of the medieval oratory at Temple Benan; the wealth of knowledge in Mick Gibbons's expounding on Dún Dúchathair; the punishing uphill cycle relieved by the exhilarating free-wheel away from Dún Aonghasa, followed by an unceremonious puncture and swift landing - and the sore, laughing bundle scooped up by the bicycle hire man and his friendly mini-bus.

Present-day travellers to the region now have something else to take with them. The latest archaeological discourse is an impressive and lavishly illustrated publication by Dr Carleton Jones, who lectures in the Department of Archaeology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and specialises in the prehistory of this area. In his new book The Burren and the Aran Islands: Exploring the Archaeology, he aims to bring the monuments - from those of early prehistory to 19th century military fortifications - to a wider audience using his own research and consolidating recent work by other experts in the field. At the very outset, echoing the sentiments of the late Prof M. J. O'Kelly, Jones stresses the importance of recognising that every monument we see has been built by individuals who were as real, and as varied in character, as we are.

Some of Jones's ground-breaking theories are brought to a popular audience for the first time in this publication. In his case study of competition and upheaval on Roughan Hill, in the south-east of the Burren, he attributes the large concentration of wedge tombs (a form of megalithic tomb generally dated to 2800-2000BC) on the hill to competition between different families for small patches of sacred ground.

This is also borne out, Jones suggests, by the untidy layout of the ancient walls which contrast with the orderly field systems that have been mapped at the Céide Fields in north Mayo. He uses a relative chronology to date the walls, measuring the heights of the pedestals of bedrock on which they are built, and then radiocarbon-dating one of these to fix the chronology, finding that most date to the late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age - contemporary with many of the wedge tombs .

Jones's description of monuments in the landscape and his provocative theories on kinship are backed up by discussions of the spatial relationships between sites. He uses the distribution and classification of tombs in the Burren to discuss the nature and structure of Neolithic society there, interpreting the two portal tombs - highly visible monuments that would have been obvious to anyone passing along the major access routes - as marking the edges of the territory. His distribution maps showing concentrations of monuments contrasts favourably with some tedious theoretical archaeology books in which ideas about landscape can be illustrated rather abstractly.

The Burren and the Aran Islands were also important during the early middle ages, and Jones places monuments such as the impressive ringfort at Cahercommaun in this context. A discussion of the Harvard Expedition's excavations at Cahercommaun is enhanced by reproductions of the beautiful plans and drawings that are rarely seen beyond the excavation report (published in the 1938 volume of the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy).

Jones explores the links between the archaeology of the Burren and of the Aran Islands - for example, the numbers of wedge tombs and the concentrations of forts (there is one stone fort in each townland on the islands) and there is a large section devoted to Christianity and pilgrimage, including the high crosses at Temple Brecan. There is also a summary of Sinead Ní Ghabhláin's excavations at St Ciaran's monastery on Inis Mór.

But perhaps Jones's biggest success is the sense of enthusiasm that he conveys, for example in the captions to the action photographs taken on the recent excavations, where the team used a device made out of rope and timber to lift the stones during the excavation of the Parknabinnia tomb.

In addition to providing an academic narrative, this book aims to be a guide to the interested traveller. Jones presents in detail sites that are: essential to understanding a particular theme or period; representative of many other sites; or have been previously excavated.

Jones intends this book either to be read cover-to-cover or to be brought on site visits and dipped into, in conjunction with Robinson's maps and those of the Ordnance Survey. National grid references are provided, as well as handy symbols indicating whether the sites are signposted or easily reachable on foot. However, the structure of the book makes it difficult to navigate smoothly, for the text switches freely between description and analysis. Perhaps it might be more successful - and, indeed, easier to use as a field guide - if all the straight narrative and the thematic discussions were in one part, with the detailed site descriptions excavation results and related illustrations in a separate catalogue. Overall, the look of the book is somewhat busy and the maps and line drawings lack the consistency of, for example, the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape (1997). Nonetheless, this book is a very welcome addition to the literature.

As Jones points out, the landscapes of the Burren and the Aran Islands, while ancient, are very much alive and the archaeology - on which of course there can be no last word - is fascinating to many people. Artists, antiquarians and field-trip students alike are bound to be captivated by this place for generations to come.

The Burren and the Aran Islands: Exploring the Archaeology by Carleton Jones is published by the Collins Press 35 hardback, 25 paperback)

Joyce Hickey is an Irish Times journalist and a member of the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland