We'll be hearing a lot over the next few days about the winter solstice and the sun (if there is any) shining through to the inner chamber of the great edifice at Newgrange. A phenomenon that should remind us how, thousands of years ago, there were brainy and hard-working people inhabiting this island. Long before Cells and Normans and Cromwellians and planters of one sort and another. Indeed, we are all runners-in to this most remote European West.
The archaeological correspondents of the London Times has an article (December 17th) about Knowth, just across the River Boyne. He quotes Professor George Eogan as saying: "This one site has more stones than are found in the whole Iberian peninsula and in France." He was talking especially of six slabs elaborately decorated, the decoration of which became apparent only when the stones were removed from their sockets. Why was the art work hidden? Perhaps there was some ritualistic demand; but also it may have been due to the fact that the stones came from an earlier tomb which had been demolished.
The Professor also puts forward the idea that practices changed through time, and that there was a long period of tomb-building at Knowth. The western tomb has more than 70 decorated slabs in its 114 feet, many of which were hidden, and other tombs are also decorated. Respect for the previous inhabitants of this sod might give us a cooler and more sober view as to who the Irish are.
Archaeology is a fine study. The quarterly Archaeology Ireland is always worth while, even for the lay reader. It is now ten years a-going. The current winter issue has much good reading and illustration. One article deals with stone axes: porcellanite, shale and porphyry, the first being apparently the toughest and most used. Nine thousand have been recorded, writes Dr Stephen Randal, "concentrated in the north-east hut widespread throughout the country."
Other lively pieces, with illustrations as striking as in a tourist magazine. Annually, the magazine likes to give, few howlers (here called "Exam in-sights"): "The body was placed in a crouching fatal position . . . The Irish Neolithic was based on New Age farming communities . . . They developed and used axes which were made out of flint noodles which were split on one or both aides."