2011:001 - BALLYAGHAGAN, Antrim

Aerial photographs revealed the presence of earthworks close to the summit of Cavehill in the Cavehill Country Park, which is owned and maintained by Belfast City Council. The NIEA asked the Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork at Queen’s University, Belfast, to investigate the nature and date of these earthworks by conducting a small archaeological excavation there. After obtaining the permission of the landowner, Belfast City Council, a single excavation trench, measuring 16m by 1m, was excavated across and to the west of the bank in April 2011.

The earthwork is located in the townland of Ballyaghagan, on the south side of the hill, at an altitude of approximately 300m (1,000ft). MacArt’s fort (ANT056-018) is located about 400m to the north-east and Ballyaghagan cairn (056-016) 400m to the north. A metal-detectorist found a gold dress-fastener within some 30m of the earthwork in 1994.

The trench was located so as to cross both the bank and a depressed area running parallel to the bank but several metres west and further downslope. It was assumed in advance of the excavation that this depression was a ditch and that the bank was the remnant of an earthwork cast up from it. Excavation, however, showed this not to be the case.

The sod and a thin brown sandy loam topsoil, up to 80mm thick, covered the entire trench. It was stratified above a layer of peat up to about 0.14m thick. This peat sat on top of an orange-brown sandy clay loam, which at the western end of the trench sat directly above the subsoil but at the eastern end of the trench was located above the layers composing the earthen bank and two bank slump layers derived from it.

The earthen bank was constructed by excavating two shallow gullies and piling the sods and subsoil obtained from these on the pre-existing ground surface, still detectable as dark brown loamy clay. The more easterly gully was at most 0.8m wide and 0.2m deep. The westerly gully was somewhat wider, up to 1.4m, and also about 0.2m deep. The gullies were approximately 1.6m apart.

Sixty-four pieces of coarse pottery were found in the orange-brown sandy clay loam which covered the bank but which was below the peat. It was the only context to produce ceramic finds. They were all found within the westerly 2m of the trench. There were four fabric types within this context.

Of the 64 sherds found during the excavation four vessels can be identified. One vessel, with incised decoration and flattened rim, is of Souterrain Ware and, given the absence of early decorated variants of Souterrain Ware, is likely to be 9th- or 10th-century in date or later (Ryan 1973). A second vessel with a slightly chamfered rim is also likely to be Souterrain Ware, although with no decoration it could date from any period of production of Souterrain Ware from the 8th to the 13th or even 14th century (McSparron and Williams 2009). A third vessel with no rims surviving is more difficult to attribute to type, although it is grass-marked and grass-marking is common on Souterrain Ware; with so many other fragments of this type of pottery in the immediate area it is most likely that this represents a third Souterrain Ware vessel.

A fourth vessel, represented by a single rim, is somewhat different, however. It has a rather different fabric than any of the other sherds, was more evenly fired and displays slightly different inclusion types, including a few fragments of crushed flint. This vessel had a simple rounded rim. It is very difficult to identify very small pottery fragments accurately but it is possible that this is not a Souterrain Ware vessel piece. It is reminiscent of Neolithic pottery.

Seventy-six fragments of flint were found during the excavation. Although a small number of these may be natural, most show evidence of having been struck. There are clearly several cores within the assemblage, several struck flakes and a large number of fragments or débitage and micro-débitage. The overall impression of the flint from Cavehill is of a late prehistoric or possibly even early medieval assemblage (Brian Sloan, pers. comm.).

The excavation trench uncovered the remains of the earthen bank and its constituent components. The bank was initially constructed from earth and turves cut from two depressions or gullies on either side of the bank. It is difficult to estimate the exact height of the earthen bank, as it has eroded significantly since it was first erected, but the amount of material excavated from the two depressions on either side of the bank suggests that it must have stood about 1m above the level of the relic topsoil. This would have been enhanced by the depression excavated to the west of the bank, giving the impression of a bank about 1.5m high as it was approached from downslope.

The location of the bank straddling the current path through the Cavehill Country Park may be of significance. The natural approach from the south to MacArt’s Fort, identified by Liz Fitzpatrick (2004) as a likely early medieval inauguration site, is along, or close to, the line of this path. Just after the point on this approach where the bank is situated, the path makes one final upward surge, turns north and levels to reveal the vista that is the top of Cavehill.

In the early medieval period Cavehill and the Belfast area were within the territory of the Ulaid, the chief dynasty of which was the Dál Fiatacht. The Dál Fiatacht carried out their rituals of inauguration at Crew Hill (Byrne 1973, 125), which has recently been investigated by Philip Macdonald (2008; see also Excavations 2007, no. 40, AE/07/36). In the aftermath of the battle of Crew Hill in 1004, in which the Dál Fiatach derbfhine was almost wiped out fighting the Cenél nEógain (Byrne 1973, 127), there was a period of dynastic flux lasting several generations, with different groups competing for the kingship. It is possible that at this time one of the competing groups of the Dál Fiatacht, one which did not have access to the traditional inaugural site at Crew Hill, began to use the summit of Cavehill, centred on MacArt’s Fort, as an inauguration site. The presence of a stone chair, now lost (Fitzpatrick 2004), on MacArt’s Fort hints strongly at inauguration. Important as the actual site of the inauguration itself was, it is unlikely that it would have been the only site associated with these rituals. It is possible to view the entire summit of Cavehill as a ritual landscape associated with kingly inauguration.

In human rituals of all types anthropologists have uncovered unconscious structure. Some structure is related only to small groups of individuals, possibly individuals of the same cultural or linguistic group, while other structure is apparently cross-cultural, such as the stages of ritual identified by Van Gennep (1960). Van Gennep discussed these stages in the various ‘rites of passage’, such as entering adulthood, marriage or even travel between nations. Kingly inauguration is clearly one of these ‘rites of passage’. These rituals are split into several stages: the stage before the actual ritual (possibly involving purificatory rites and preparations), the actual ceremony itself and the return as the changed individual. These rites can, and often will, be played out on the landscape: the ceremonial procession to the inaugural site of the elect, the inauguration itself and the return as a king. These events will not only be played out on the landscape but will also actually be described on the landscape physically by human constructions. If the inauguration is carried out on MacArt’s Fort itself, then the function of its external ditch becomes more understandable, as the focus of activity is turned to the interior as opposed to the exterior. In addition, the processional route is likely to become etched on the landscape with the construction of a path or road from the secular kingdom to the inaugural site. There are likely to be barriers, or thresholds, along this route—not everyone may be entitled to see or take part in the rituals of kingship—and at these thresholds the social structure of early medieval society may be inscribed on the soil. The positioning of our excavated bank, just below the point where the path turns to view the vista with MacArt’s Fort in the centre of the field of vision, is what we might expect if the landscape of the ritual inauguration were to be subdivided from the secular landscape of the kingdom below.

Possibly of great importance is the finding of a late Bronze Age gold dress-fastener (ANT056-095) approximately 80m west of the site of the excavation. The find-spot was identified by Richard Warner, then of the Ulster Museum, with the assistance of the metal-detectorist who found the object. Subsequently a 3m-square trench was excavated around the find-spot (Warner 1994). This revealed a gully filled with earth and stone, interpreted as a path, upon which the dress-fastener had been set. Beside the dress-fastener a hearth was discovered; this produced charcoal which when radiocarbon-dated gave an early medieval date. Warner allowed for two possibilities, firstly that the gold dress-fastener was a late Bronze Age deposition with a chance early medieval hearth located beside it and secondly that the dress-fastener was deposited in the early medieval period.

The latter possibility is not as unlikely as it sounds. Early medieval kingship was very good at appropriating earlier sites as symbols of ancient entitlement. Burying an ancient artefact at a threshold may also have been a mechanism for consecrating a ritual site, giving it a heritage. The fact that there was probably no direct ancestral link between the artefact and the Dál Fiatacht was incidental; it was the belief of the Dál Fiatacht that was important, not the reality. The entire area between the spot of the burial of the gold object and the excavated earthen bank may have been a boundary zone, a ‘liminal’ region at the edge of the sacred landscape, where possibly the procession assembled before ascending the mountain and where well-wishers watched the progress of the king-elect and awaited his return.

A complete account of the excavation can be read at http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/CentreforArchaeologicalFieldworkCAF/PDFFileStore/Filetoupload,275509,en.pdf.

 

References

Byrne, F.J.  1973  Irish kings and high kings. London.

Fitzpatrick, E.  2004  Royal inauguration in Gaelic Ireland 1100–1600. Woodbridge.

Macdonald, P.  2008  Archaeological evaluation of the inaugural landscape of Crew Hill (Cráeb Telcha), Co. Antrim. Ulster Journal of Archaeology 67, 84–107.

McSparron, C. and Williams, B.  2009  The excavation of an Early Christian rath with later medieval occupation at Drumadoon, Co. Antrim. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 109C, 105–64.

Ryan, M.  1973  Native pottery in early historic Ireland. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 73C, 619–45.

Van Gennep, A.  1960  The rites of passage. London.

Warner, R.  1994  A summary report on the gold object from Ballyaghagan, Cavehill. Unpublished report lodged with the NIEA.

Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast BT7 1NN