Irish Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1999

Hegemonic Megaliths: Changing theIrish Prehistoric

JOHN ROBB, Bath Spa University College

The archaeologist's job is to accept nations as artefacts while constantlydrawing attention to the processes of fabrication. (Neal Ascherson) [1]

The archaeological heritage of Ireland includes 200,000 field monuments standing bothin the visual landscape, as sites/sights, and in the national iconography of Irish identity[2]. That is about one monument to twenty people, probably the highest ratio inEurope. There is, after all, only one pub to every three hundred people in Ireland.Archaeology, both as a heritage in stone and as an academic practice, has been animportant contributor to conceptions of Irish identity which have circulated at homeand abroad for many years. Debates over continuity, distinctiveness, the balance struckbetween exogenous and endogenous influences, the nature of the Celtic, and the 'timecollapse' syndrome, link the study of the Irish landscape with wider and more publicspheres in politics and cultural representation [3]. Arguably, the prehistoric heritage hasbeen successfully, if selectively, appropriated as a stable, continuous and insular originmyth, the development of which is bound up with the project of Gaelic-nationalisthegemony.

Unlike Irish history, archaeology in Ireland has not been subject to systematicrevisionism (or re-revisionism), which is surprising given the close association betweenthe two subjects [4]. Whilst the internal view is of an objective, empirical science, theexternal view is of a strongly nationalist discipline. Charles Orser, an American archae-ologist who has excavated pre-Famine cottier dwellings at Strokestown, contrasts theanthropological basis of the discipline in America with the overtly historical emphasisin Ireland. He identifies in Irish archaeology a 'willingness to present the island'sglorious past', manifestly part of a pervasive nationalist ideology, summarised bySeamus Deane as a 'felt need for mythologies, heroic lineages and dreams of conti-nuity'. Orser, with other critics of traditional Irish archaeology (notably GabrielCooney), complains of a kind of hyper-empiricism which rejects theory whilst implicitlymaintaining that the cultural-historical narrative 'emerges' from the data [5]. BruceTrigger has written that the primary function of a nationalist archaeology, like anationalist history, is to bolster the pride and morale of nations or ethnic groups, bydrawing attention to past cultural achievements [6]. Irish archaeology has done this,but is unusual in emphasising the cultural agency of invasions [7]. The origins of thistradition are in early Irish chronicles and in imperialist antiquarian accounts of fieldmonuments as in, but not of, Ireland [8]. The earliest interpretation of this latter type,which was to be hugely influential, was made by Giraldus Cambrensis in his History andTopography of Ireland which appeared in 1187, following the Norman invasion. Giral-dus, and others since, supposed that ancient Irish structures were the work of unaccul-

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turated invaders (such as Norwegians, Danes or 'Ostmen'), perhaps to strengthenNorman claims on Ireland, either by denigrating the culture of the natives as Borlandsuggests or through drawing a parallel between the Normans (descended from Vikings)and the earlier Scandinavian invaders credited with such intense and widespreadbuilding activity. Elizabethan and Stuart Anglo-Irish and English antiquaries such asWare and Vallency continued to credit invaders with the more substantial and enig-matic structures which litter the Irish landscape [9]. Terms in general currency, suchas 'Danes' raths' at that time and subsequently, confirmed to the population theimperialist truth that the 'meere Irish' of Giraldus had no need for defensive works,resorting instead to wood and bog [10].

Michael Herity contrasts the two traditions personified by Macfirbisigh and Ware inthe seventeenth century, the former schooled in the dying hereditary disciplines of royalchronicler and genealogist, the latter an imperial 'new antiquary' after the style ofCamden. Ware was 'disposed to accept uncritically' the Danish provenance of key Irishmonuments [11]. In England on the other hand, near-contemporary antiquaries suchas Aubrey and Stukely were able to identify Stonehenge, for instance, as the work ofnative inhabitants rather than the Egyptians or the Phoenicians. In Ireland, a generalacceptance that the great chamber tomb at Newgrange was native in origin had to wait,with the significant exception of the Welsh Celtic scholar Edward Lhwyd in 1699, untilGeorge Petrie's 'patriotic' survey of 1833 [12].

The construction of an invasion-driven prehistoric narrative was based on early Irishannals and genealogies, commonly seen by historians and archaeologists as sheddinglight on the beginning and end points of their respective enquiries. Indeed, nationalistIrish history has been concerned with demonstrating that successive invaders, from theVikings to the planters, were duly absorbed into the Gaelic continuum. In this regard,both disciplines owe a debt to the Irish cultural revival of the late nineteenth centuryin setting agendas for investigation. The Leabhar Gabhdla was particularly influential inthis context: a native Irish work, evidently based on earlier oral traditions, and dated tothe 1160s. It contains a compelling sequence of invasions of discrete ethnic groups,such as the Tuatha na Danaan, the Fir Bolg and the Milesians, each of whichsucceeded in taking control of at least part of the island from the preceding arrivals.What is compelling about these legendary peoples is the challenge of identifying themwith archaeological and geolinguistic evidence, a challenge irresistible to many Irisharchaeologists throughout the twentieth century.

This insular vision corresponded closely to similar developments elsewhere inEurope, influenced by Oscar Montelius and the principle of ex oriente lux [13]. By thelate nineteenth century an orthodoxy regarding cultural change in prehistory had beenestablished. In this paradigm, cultural innovation originated in the Near East civilisa-tions, and diffused slowly across the continent from south-east to north-west. Ethnicobsession, environmental determinism and imperialism provided the suggestive con-temporary intellectual milieu within which diffusionism gained widespread acceptance.The diffusionist model invoked prehistoric succession, wave upon wave of ethnicallydiscrete colonising groups bearing the successive gifts of farming, ceramics, metals andnew religious beliefs which found expression in artefacts and in the monumentallandscape. Only through aggression and the dispossession by superior invaders ofinferior natives could this model be seen to work by Victorian anthropologists, archae-ologists and geographers, involved (as many of them were) in imperial expansion. CyrilFox began to develop his influential ideas about the Personality of Britain in the 1920s,dividing the island between Lowland and Highland zones [14]. In Fox's view, success-

Hegemonic Megaliths 7

The diffusionist orthodoxy: successive movementsof people bring new ideas to the Lowland Zone. ',These influences weaken in the Highland Zone, ;blending into an archaic tradition. \

Ireland, in the invasionist variant, absorbs andtransmits cultural change within the Atlantic Zoneof the 'British Isles', influencing Britain more thanit is influenced by Britain.

FIG. 1. Ireland in the Atlantic Zone: diffusionism and invasionism.

ive waves of conquerors impressed their identities on the former, but, in the latter,archaic cultural traits fused with echoes of the struggles of the Lowland zone to producea distinctive and continuous tradition. Within this framework, Britain, a peripheralisland, could be positioned as the right place at the right time, receptive to emissariesof progress coming ultimately from the Mediterranean as those empires slid intodecline [15].

An Atlantic zone was added to the model by H. J. Fleure, and was embracedenthusiastically by Estyn Evans whose Personality of Ireland: Habitat, Heritage andHistory first emerged in a series of lectures in the 1970s [16]. This influential Belfastgeographer was also an archaeologist, who entered into a celebrated spat with Ruaidhri,the son of Eamonn de Valera, over the origin and diffusion of a class of Neolithic burialmound, the court cairns. De Valera proposed Breton origins for this distinctive class ofprehistoric tomb-shrine built of dry-stone, and comprising a ceremonial court, whollyor partly enclosed within the structure. He suggested that they were introduced by aninvading group which landed at Killala Bay in Co. Mayo and then gradually spreadeastwards across Ulster, eventually to colonise south-west Scotland. By this stage thecourt cairns had evolved significant differences to the 'original' types in Mayo [17].Evans disagreed with this interpretation, preferring to see court cairns as imports fromScotland, spreading westwards to meet the finality of the Atlantic in Mayo. Beforescientific dating techniques, alternative inferences of prehistoric spatial evolution fromexcavated monuments were open to this radical degree of disagreement. While de

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FIG. 2. The Poulaphuca portal tomb in County Clare. The portal tomb or dolmen is one of five types ofIrish Neolithic funerary monument which archaeologists have in the past attempted to identify with

particular invading peoples. Photocredit: John Robb.

Valera interpreted the dense clustering of cairns in Mayo as indicative of a culturalhearth, Evans was able to counter-claim that the cluster represented a final surgein population as the new land for westward migration ran out. These competingperspectives have been characterised as 'nationalist' and 'unionist' respectively [18].

The closed world of the Atlantic zone had Ireland at its heart, core to the periphery.In a way curiously similar to the original feminine construction of the Celtic [19], asmuch imposed upon as embraced by Irish nationalism, the Atlantic zone offered at leastsome space for building a national origin-myth. The idea of a distinctive and continu-ous archaic tradition which Fox located in the Highland zone of Britain accorded withthe emergent nationalist perception of prehistoric and early historic Ireland: theaddition of a maritime dimension put Ireland centre-stage. The sea-ways of the saintshad been used by the first farmers, megalithic and Beaker peoples before, and changewas moderated by distance and the filtering of the Highland zone of Britain, allowingIreland untroubled cultural continuity for millennia. As a hegemonic paradigm encom-passing European environmental thinking at the time, it was difficult to establish analternative framework, and Ireland by 1920 was embraced firmly within it. Nationalistarchaeology can be seen to minimise Irish derivation from British origins within thatcontext, at least for a time. Later writers found that the logic of invasionism, bound upwith the prevailing trend of European diffusionism (from south-east to north-west)emphasised external, largely British, influences in Irish prehistory, and any sense ofindigenous cultural autonomy becomes spasmodic [20].

Prehistoric sites are used today in ways which confirm the timeless origins of Gaelicnationalist legitimacy. Megaliths are Neolithic monuments, dispersed across the agrar-ian landscape, which have been readily incorporated into later Gaelic folklore and recurin popular culture, tourism writing and advertising [21]. They are powerfully evocativeof great antiquity, the rural, continuity, the vernacular and the local, and are used

Hegemonic Megaliths 9

unproblematically to express ancestral connections in ways which would be unusual incountries where invaders have been adopted as national ancestors, such as the Saxonsin England. The public view remains that of a distant, undifferentiated past, importantto Irish people's sense of place and belonging. Ireland abroad is widely seen as the lastbastion of an ancient European civilisation, popularly 'Celtic', an important componentof the heritage tourism product. Earlier Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments fit easilyinto this 'Celtic' landscape, though archaeologists are generally dismissive of theanachronism. Graham's 'time collapse' or Watson's 'annulment of history' are evidentin traditional evocations of an Irish 'Golden Age' [22]. The fact that Ireland experi-enced a distinctive and opulent 'Age of Gold' in the Bronze Age may serve to reinforcethis conception, despite fastidious attention to dates and provenance on the part ofmuseum curators [23]. In Brett's analysis, 'popular histories' (heritages) are 'constitu-tive' of nations, whereas academic texts are 'deconstitutive' [24]. If this is so, thedecoupling of archaeology from constitutive activity seems to have been progressivesince the 1930s. Heritage is another matter.

The heritage canon of the Republic remains dominated by 'megaliths and monaster-ies' as perusal of the official guide to sites and buildings in state care shows [25]. Insome ways, the Europeanisation of prehistoric heritage, in terms of a source of heritagefunding and tourist expectations, has been adopted into the nationalist narrative. ToCharles Haughey, 'We are the children of the first Europeans. ... [We] can trace ourcontinuity over five thousand years, and that's of phenomenal interest' [26]. Politicaland state involvement in archaeology, including the development of impressive EU-funded visitor centres in recent years, may account for the difference in internal andexternal perceptions of archaeology. According to Cooney, Irish archaeologists havebeen content to limit their public role to management rather than taking a directrole in public interpretation. Here, the initiative is with state agencies and heritagemanagers.

A reading of recent texts suggests that archaeology in Ireland has changed fundamen-tally since the 1970s [27]. Explanations of cultural change are no longer sought ininvasionism, but in cultural autonomy, indigenous evolution and a new reading ofcontinuity. Invasionist-nationalist archaeology was a paradox, where the origins of Irishidentity were negotiated within the Atlantic zone paradigm. Furthermore, an auton-omous nomenclature appears to be in the making with a distancing from the use ofBritish terms such as 'henge' in favour of 'embanked enclosure' to describe analogousIrish sites. The hegemonic nature of 'British Isles archaeology' was obscured in part bythe authority of the early Gaelic texts, but is now more clearly seen [28]. Empiricismand modest inference now operate within a qualitatively different paradigm whichemphasises the lack of archaeological evidence for invasions. The old texts are no longeracknowledged uncritically as 'windows' on prehistory [29]. Strong material continuitiesin art styles and metalworking from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age have revivednotions of 'cumulative Celticity'. This accommodation does not extend to the radicaldenial of a coherent Celtic identity before AD 1700 which is finding favour elsewhere,but appears to be an intermediate position in this commercially sensitive area. Despitethe popular perceptions of a glittering Celtic prehistory, the total heritage of art in stoneand metal found in Ireland is surprisingly modest.

Critics of the heritage uses of the prehistoric in Ireland, such as Kneafsey and Brett,voice concern over the 'unproblematic, fixed and authentic identities' and 'collectiveamnesia' which interpretative centres can promote [30]. 'Time collapse' is very evidentat Craggaunowen, Co. Limerick, for instance, where generic prehistoric reconstructions

10 John Robb

from different periods BC are found adjacent to Tim Severin's replica of St Brendan'sleather boat. The blend of science and legend at Navan Fort, Co. Armagh, worriesBrett particularly. The Cuchulain story is dramatically portrayed in a multimediapresentation, a highly-coloured and politically charged counterpoint to the bare-bonesscience of archaeological techniques also on show. There can be no doubt that (Gaelic)legendary associations with sites, however tenuous and irritating to archaeologists,continue to colour visitor expectations and media interest, and are difficult to avoid inthe current heritage trend towards spectacular 'infotainment'. Accommodating theCeltic in interpretations of pre-Celtic sites such as Ceide Fields is another interpretativedilemma to Brett, as visitors expect the Celtic to emerge at a much earlier date thanarchaeologists commonly do. The Celtic remains an important element of touristicdistinctiveness and one in which the Irish heritage industry has invested heavily.Deconstitutive archaeology threatens this resource.

Divergent trends have appeared between the academy and landscape heritage inrecent years. The invasionist presumption is currently out of favour. A new paradigmhas emerged, based both upon the rapid increase in the quantity and quality of theempirical record, and new interpretations of temporal and spatial variations withinIreland. These emphasise prehistoric continuity and indigenous cultural evolution. Avision of a prehistoric 'Irish Ireland' has emerged which seems ironically of greaterappeal to nationalism than the uncomfortable paradoxes of invasionism. In a doubleiconoclasm, Cooney and Grogan suggest that the first significant ingress of new peopleoccurred in the Roman period, a time when according to the orthodox nationalistconstruction, Ireland stood aloof from this latest Lowland zone irruption [31]. Itremains to be seen how Irish landscape heritage will adapt to these realignments in theacademic sphere, which could be regarded as a direct shift from nationalism tore-revisionism.

NOTES

[1] Neil Ascherson, 'Foreword' in Nationalism and Archaeology: Scottish Archaeological Forum,ed. J. A. Atkinson, I. Banks and J. O'SulIivan (Cruithne Press, 1996), p. vii.

[2] Gabriel Cooney, 'Towards a Sustainable Policy for the Management and Interpretation of theArchaeological Endowment', in Assessing Sustainability in Ireland, ed. Frank Convery and JohnFeehan (Allied Irish Bank, 1996), pp. 162-167.

[3] Brian Graham and L. J. Proudfoot, 'Introduction: a Perspective on the Nature of Irish HistoricalGeography', in An Historical Geography of Ireland, ed. B. J. Graham and L. J. Proudfoot (AcademicPress, 1993), pp. 1-18; and Brian Graham, 'Heritage Conservation and Revisionist Nationalismin Ireland', in Building a New Heritage: Tourism, Culture and Identity in the New Europe, ed.G. J. Ashworth and P. J. Larkham (Routledge, 1994), pp. 135-158.

[4] Gabriel Cooney, 'Theory and Practice in Irish Archaeology', in Theory in Archaeology, ed.P. J. Ucko (Routledge, 1995), pp. 263-277.

[5] Charles Orser, 'Archaeology and Modern Irish History', Irish Studies Review no. 18 (1997),pp. 2-7.

[6] Bruce Trigger, 'Alternative Archaeologies; Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist', Man vol. 19,no. 3 (1984), pp. 355-370.

[7] John Waddell, 'The Invasion Hypothesis in Irish Prehistory', Antiquity vol. LII (1978),pp. 121-128.

[8] For instance, Michael Herity, 'Rathmulcah, Ware and Macfirbisigh', Ulster Journal of Archaeologyvol. 33 (1970), pp. 49-53; Peter Woodman, 'Who Possesses Tara? Politics in Archaeology inIreland', in Theory in Archaeology, ed. Ucko, pp. 278-296; and Dorcas Boreland, 'Anglophobesand Anglophiles; Some Early Accounts of Ireland', in Nationalism and Archaeology ed. Atkinson,pp. 104-110.

Hegemonic Megaliths 11

[9] See, Herity, 'Rathmulcah, Ware and Macfirbisigh', p. 50; and Michael O'Kelly, Newgrange:Archaeology, Art and Legend (Thames and Hudson, 1982), p. 34.

[10] Boreland, 'Anglophobes and Anglophiles', p. 109.[11] Herity, 'Rathmulcah, Ware and Macfirbisigh', p. 51.[12] O'Kelly, Nezvgrange; Archaeology, Art and Legend, p. 35.[13] Michael Herity and George Eogan, Ireland in Prehistory (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 12.[14] Cyril Fox, The Personality of Britain: Its Influence on Inhabitant and Invader in Prehistoric and Early

Historic Times (National Museum of Wales, 1959).[15] Richard Hingley, The Shared Moral Purposes of Two Empires and the Origin of Romano-British

Archaeology', in Nationalism and Archaeology, ed. Atkinson, pp. 135-142.[16] Emyr Estyn Evans, The Personality of Ireland: Habitat, Heritage and History (Lilliput Press, 1992).[17] Ruaidhrí de Valéra, 'The Court Cairns of Ireland', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy vol. 60

(1960), pp. 9-140.[18] See Matthew Stout, 'Emyr Estyn Evans and Northern Ireland: the Archaeology and Geography

of a New State', in Nationalism and Archaeology, ed. Atkinson, pp. 111-127. Evans' own accountis contained in Emys Estyn Evans, Ireland and the Atlantic Heritage (Lilliput Press, 1996), p. 236.

[19] See D. Cairns and S. Richards, Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism and Culture (ManchesterUniversity Press, 1988), p. 48, for contrasting characteristics of the Celtic and Gaelic construc-tions, and Catherine Nash's 'Embodied Irishness; Gender, Sexuality and Irish Identity', inIn Search of Ireland: a Cultural Geography, ed. B. J. Graham (Routledge, 1997), pp. 108-127.

[20] See, for instance, Herity and Eogan, Ireland in Prehistory, and Sean Ó Ríordáin, Antiquities of theIrish Countryside, 5th edn (Methuen, 1979). By 1988, Peter Harbison was suggesting that relativelysmall numbers of traders and prospectors were capable of introducing new material cultures intoIreland: Pre Christian Ireland, from the First Settlers to the Early Celts (Thames and Hudson).

[21] See especially Gabriel Cooney, 'Sacred and Secular Neolithic Landscapes in Ireland', in SacredSites, Sacred Places, ed. D. L. Carmichael, J. Hubert, B. Reeves and A. Schanche (Routledge,1994), pp. 32-43; and O'Kelly, Newgrange: Archaeology, Art and Legend for the incorporation ofthis Neolithic site into later myths.

[22] Brian Graham, 'The Search for the Common Ground: Estyn Evans's Ireland', Transactions of theInstitute of British Geographers, New Series, vol. 19, no. 2 (1994), pp. 183-201; and GeorgeWatson, 'Celticism and the Annulment of History', Irish Studies Review no. 9 (1995), pp. 2-6.

[23] 'Ireland's Gold' exhibition, National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, February 1998.[24] David Brett, The Construction of Heritage (Cork University Press, 1996).[25] Éilis Brennan, Heritage: a Visitor's Guide (Dublin, Office of Public Works, 1990); and Brian

Graham, 'Heritage Conservation and Revisionist Nationalism in Ireland', in Building a NewHeritage: Tourism, Culture and Identity in the New Europe, ed. G. J. Ashworth and P. J. Larkham(Routledge, 1994), pp. 135-158.

[26] Moya Kneafsey, 'A Landscape of Memories; Heritage and Tourism in Mayo', in Landscape,Heritage and Identity: Case Studies in Irish Ethnography, ed. U. Kockel (University of LiverpoolPress, 1995), pp. 147-148.

[27] Gabriel Cooney and Eoin Grogan, Irish Prehistory: a Social Perspective (Wordwell, 1994).[28] Gabriel Cooney notes the routine inclusion of Ireland within British archaeologists' works on the

Neolithic, a presumption of a 'British Isles archaeology' in spite of strong and growing evidenceof Irish Neolithic distinctiveness: 'Theory and Practice in Irish Archaeology', p. 272.

[29] Barry Raftery, Pagan Celtic Ireland: the Enigma of the Irish Iron Age (Thames and Hudson, 1994).[30] Moya Kneafsey, 'The Cultural Tourist; Patron Saint of Ireland?', in Culture, Tourism and

Development: the Case of Ireland, ed. U. Kockel (Liverpool University Press, 1994), pp. 103-116;and Brett, The Construction of Heritage.

[31] Cooney and Grogan, Irish Prehistory: a Social Perspective, p. 205.