Sorry for cross-posting, but this sort of affects about everyone.

Has anyone here been reading the nice long piece in Archaeology Ireland tying
bog bodies to territorial boundaries? No? Following from the bit of discussion
here when the initial newspaper reports appeared, I'd expected to see several
people jumping on this.

The essence of the case presented is that many of the bog bodies datable to the
iron age or immediately adjacent periods (eg late BA) can be shown to have been
recovered either on or very close to territorial boundaries which exist even
today, ie parish, barony, county and province boundaries. Most striking is the
number of bodies recovered at barony boundaries.

To give this a little background, there has been an argument that the basis for
the cantreds and baronies established in Ireland by the Anglo-Norman
administration were based mostly or wholly on existing territorial divisions, ie
the likes of baronies mirror the earlier Irish túatha. The basic structure of
these early cantreds and baronies changed a bit, but not really very much since
then... and we largely know what changes were made. What this says is that the
baronial divisions of Ireland today are not just a close facsimile of the
administrative divisions of 800-odd years ago, but also match quite well to the
divisions of land in place during the pre-Norman period. That presents an
atractive prospect, that we might be able, using this idea as a spur, to
partially reconstruct the political divisions of early medieval Ireland. Some
work of this sort has been carried out, assisted by the references to
territories and their boundaries from early and late medieval texts. There are
other ways in which this has been approached which I'll not go into here, but
suffice to say that they produce results that also show a striking parallel
between later baronial structures and the pattern of land use during the early
medieval.

What Eamonn Kelly's work here has presented us with is the prospect of
considering these territorial divisions as having even greater antiquity (in
some places at least) then even the early medieval. Because he has shown some
examples of similar (apparently) border-marking practices occurring from late BA
contexts, not only are we presented with the possibility that the modern
baronial structure is based on a 2000-year old iron age social structre... but
possibly (in places at least) on an even earlier Late bronze Age structure. It
should be evident to people here that this is a remarkable proposal, that some
of our modern boundaries are derived from those of 2500-3000 years ago.

Whatever about the exciting prospect for those of us involved in studying such
territorial boundaries, this presents us with a picture of Ireland in which the
basic division of space was quite stable over an extraordinarily long portion of
the late perhistoric and early historic. What does that say about the social
structures within which these territorial structures were maintained? What about
the culture that society supported?

The idea that tales such as the Táin Bó Cuailnge gave us a mirror on the iron
age has been pooh-poohed plenty of times. I think a lot of the basis for that
response has been a result of an analysis of such things as chariots and their
use, the design of weapons, etc which have been shown to reflect much later
ideas, non-Irish influences or plain fantasy. fair enough. Might it be, however,
that the division of Ireland into túatha during the early medieval is simply a
continuation of practice from the iron age... or even the late bronze age? Might
the early estate maps, topographical poems, and collections such as Edmund
Hogan's Onomasticum Goedelicum provide us with a farmore valid - if different -
mirror on the iron age?

To conclude, here is a short summary of some of the object types also found at
similar types of sites:
swords, scabbards, wooden swords, torcs, bracelet, pins, rings, bowl, sickle,
axe, y-shaped pendants, bridle bits, wooden yokes, several bowls, cups etc,
trumpets, cauldrons...

The types of locations where these have been recovered are generally barony
boundaries or very close to barony boundaries, notably interesting points such
as where three baronial boundaries meet, points where baronial and provincial
and county boundaries coincide, etc. An example from the article:
"A horse bit and Y-shaped leading piece were discovered on farmland at Clongill,
Co Meath, where six parishes and three baronies meet (Morgallion/Upper
Kells/Lower Kells)"

The article is full of such references. So many that I think it would be highly
instructive to look at the findplaces of all the artefacts that have *not* been
found at or near such boundaries... and see just how many there are.

It may be that the seemingly very large quantity of material recovered from near
such boundaries will be swamped by a far greater number scattered across land
undistinguished in this way... but I suspect not.

Stiof
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