Ros O Maolduin
My research is currently focused on the Late Neolithic - Chalcolithic - Early Bronze Age in northwestern Europe, particularly Ireland. I am particularly interested in relationships between individuals and societies, periods of social flux and in striving to understand the ontological viewpoints of past societies. I direct a university accredited fieldschool (fieldwork currently on pause for post-excavation) and work for an archaeological consultancy www.rubiconheritage.com. I also have an interest in the digital humanities; you can find some 3D models from my excavations on our fieldschool sketchfab account https://sketchfab.com/irishfieldschool
Supervisors: Carleton Jones
Supervisors: Carleton Jones
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Papers by Ros O Maolduin
Solutions (AMS) hit the headlines with the discovery
of a late Iron Age anthropomorphic notched figure from
a riverside fen at Gortnacrannagh, Co. Roscommon in the
west of Ireland. The artefact, almost 3 m long and carved
from oak, yielded a date of cal AD 252–413 (1715±28 BP;
UBA-43937), making it the latest such figure to have been
found in Ireland.
Cleenish is situated in an area rich in early medieval settlements and monastic sites, chief among which are the monasteries at Devenish, White Island and Killedeas. The concentration of early churches on islands along the Erne is notable. Only a Devenish was there test excavation (ahead of conservation works); Dudley Waterman uncovered evidence of an early, wooden church that may be comparable to the remains at Cleenish.
One path towards fulfilling the aims is to explore art, archaeology and heritage through the senses. A phenomenological landscape perspective and an eco-cultural approach is combined with Performance Studies and movement-based practice. These perspectives and methodologies are paired with artistic and archaeological approaches to research, such as those conducted through poetry, music, performance, visual arts, physical surveys, mapping and excavations.
Methods of working have developed from walking in the landscape to sketching, through visuals, sound and movement, group dialogue, team building and exploring the materiality of making. Group movement-based workshops are used to support receptivity and inner listening for decision making through somatic principles and the senses. The project encourages transdisciplinary as well as translocal practice to arrive at new approaches and perspectives on how the past matters to us in the present and how it might have an impact on the future.
To achieve both transdisciplinary and translocal ways of working through art and archaeology/heritage, we need to expand beyond conventional art and archaeology/heritage research, communication and presentation within the well-known framework of universities, cultural history museums and art institutions. The constraints of these conventions are substituted by alternative settings in the landscape. This landscape-based practice includes method development across disciplines, times and geographic distances. It also includes collaborations with people from local communities that can contribute their perspectives, experiences and stories to the explorations.
The advantage of Experimental Heritage as practice in the landscape is its ability to challenge our current worldview to better understand other times and cultures as well as our own. This in turn provides us with new tools to create alternative futures resting on care and respect for the need for diversity and breaking not only with boundaries set up between nature and culture but also hierarchies of centre and periphery. We intend to find out more about the multitemporal layers in the landscapes surrounding us and how they relate to our inner landscapes of multitemporal perception. The combination and equal roles of artists and archaeologists as well as the contributions of researchers and members of the local communities in this work is crucial. Equality and diversity encourage transdisciplinary knowledge development.
for genetic data. In this analysis, DNA was successfully isolated from three Irish bog butter samples using a novel
approach. Furthermore, high throughput shotgun DNA sequencing was successful and bovine DNA sequences
were recovered from all three samples of bog butter. Investigation of the environmental DNA (metagenomic
analysis) recovered from the bog butter samples clearly identified similarities between samples taken from the
same bog butter. This pilot analysis suggests that bog butter could be used as a substrate for DNA extraction,
thereby furthering our understanding of diet and animal use in the past.
and suggests that a motif which occasionally occurs on them may be an abstract representation of a boat and discusses the ramifications of that potential interpretation.
The Chalcolithic wedge tombs of Ireland represent a dramatic re-emergence of megalithism over a millennium after most Neolithic and Irish megaliths were built and many centuries after most had gone out of use. This resurgence of building monuments associated with the dead may well have been associated with a period of social instability caused by the expansion of exchange networks and associated with the introduction of metallurgy. Regional, group, and individual identities all seem to have undergone change at this time, probably in a dynamic demographic context. Variations in the distribution and scale of wedge tombs in Co. Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, provide an interesting study that may reveal a pattern of clan affiliations, status competition, and enduring links to an important and ancient locale.
Keywords: Chalcolithic, megalith, monument, status competition, identity, Ireland, landscape, wedge tomb
Solutions (AMS) hit the headlines with the discovery
of a late Iron Age anthropomorphic notched figure from
a riverside fen at Gortnacrannagh, Co. Roscommon in the
west of Ireland. The artefact, almost 3 m long and carved
from oak, yielded a date of cal AD 252–413 (1715±28 BP;
UBA-43937), making it the latest such figure to have been
found in Ireland.
Cleenish is situated in an area rich in early medieval settlements and monastic sites, chief among which are the monasteries at Devenish, White Island and Killedeas. The concentration of early churches on islands along the Erne is notable. Only a Devenish was there test excavation (ahead of conservation works); Dudley Waterman uncovered evidence of an early, wooden church that may be comparable to the remains at Cleenish.
One path towards fulfilling the aims is to explore art, archaeology and heritage through the senses. A phenomenological landscape perspective and an eco-cultural approach is combined with Performance Studies and movement-based practice. These perspectives and methodologies are paired with artistic and archaeological approaches to research, such as those conducted through poetry, music, performance, visual arts, physical surveys, mapping and excavations.
Methods of working have developed from walking in the landscape to sketching, through visuals, sound and movement, group dialogue, team building and exploring the materiality of making. Group movement-based workshops are used to support receptivity and inner listening for decision making through somatic principles and the senses. The project encourages transdisciplinary as well as translocal practice to arrive at new approaches and perspectives on how the past matters to us in the present and how it might have an impact on the future.
To achieve both transdisciplinary and translocal ways of working through art and archaeology/heritage, we need to expand beyond conventional art and archaeology/heritage research, communication and presentation within the well-known framework of universities, cultural history museums and art institutions. The constraints of these conventions are substituted by alternative settings in the landscape. This landscape-based practice includes method development across disciplines, times and geographic distances. It also includes collaborations with people from local communities that can contribute their perspectives, experiences and stories to the explorations.
The advantage of Experimental Heritage as practice in the landscape is its ability to challenge our current worldview to better understand other times and cultures as well as our own. This in turn provides us with new tools to create alternative futures resting on care and respect for the need for diversity and breaking not only with boundaries set up between nature and culture but also hierarchies of centre and periphery. We intend to find out more about the multitemporal layers in the landscapes surrounding us and how they relate to our inner landscapes of multitemporal perception. The combination and equal roles of artists and archaeologists as well as the contributions of researchers and members of the local communities in this work is crucial. Equality and diversity encourage transdisciplinary knowledge development.
for genetic data. In this analysis, DNA was successfully isolated from three Irish bog butter samples using a novel
approach. Furthermore, high throughput shotgun DNA sequencing was successful and bovine DNA sequences
were recovered from all three samples of bog butter. Investigation of the environmental DNA (metagenomic
analysis) recovered from the bog butter samples clearly identified similarities between samples taken from the
same bog butter. This pilot analysis suggests that bog butter could be used as a substrate for DNA extraction,
thereby furthering our understanding of diet and animal use in the past.
and suggests that a motif which occasionally occurs on them may be an abstract representation of a boat and discusses the ramifications of that potential interpretation.
The Chalcolithic wedge tombs of Ireland represent a dramatic re-emergence of megalithism over a millennium after most Neolithic and Irish megaliths were built and many centuries after most had gone out of use. This resurgence of building monuments associated with the dead may well have been associated with a period of social instability caused by the expansion of exchange networks and associated with the introduction of metallurgy. Regional, group, and individual identities all seem to have undergone change at this time, probably in a dynamic demographic context. Variations in the distribution and scale of wedge tombs in Co. Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, provide an interesting study that may reveal a pattern of clan affiliations, status competition, and enduring links to an important and ancient locale.
Keywords: Chalcolithic, megalith, monument, status competition, identity, Ireland, landscape, wedge tomb
actively contributes to the protection of our archaeological resource, which in turn contributes to the social and economic well-being of the entire community. This paper will provide an updated overview of the archaeological profession in Ireland, drawing on recent surveys and strategies including Archaeology 2030 (NI) Archaeology 2025 (RIA)
and the findings from an ongoing survey and development strategy commissioned by the Institute of Archaeologists and conducted by Mantra Strategy (2024) and DISCO (Cleary & McCullagh 2012-2014). It will set this within the context of the legislative framework in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the complexities which
that can entail.
1034 structure project, the N5 Ballaghaderreen to Scramoge Road Project, Co Roscommon, archaeological sites dating to either side of and occupying the time of this conversion were uncovered, including one that St Patrick is reputed to have personally established. Metalworking, including iron smelting and smithing, and fine metal casting, was identified on habitation and Ecclesiastical sites, in seemingly more remote locations and in funerary contexts. This paper will consider the technological aspects revealed and the changing societal context in which it was carried out and weave this together with literary allusions to the period.
The project was helped through grants from The Irish Quaternary Society, The Royal Irish Academy and the fees of students attending the fieldschool. The aDNA work is being carried out Dan Bradley and Lara Cassidy at The Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin and the isotopes work by Rick Schulting at Oxford University.
Here, Neolithic and Bronze Age populations from diverse burial contexts are sequenced to a median of 1X genomic coverage, allowing for the accurate imputation of diploid genotypes. This combination of dense sample sets and diploid calls is a key requirement in the identification of finescale population structure among seemingly homogenous groups. Indeed, economical approaches to
the creation of such data, both molecular and bioinformatic, are imperative for addressing more localised archaeological questions.
We demonstrate such potential here, using haplotypic analysis based on imputed genotypes to identify potential autosomal structure (or lack thereof) among closely related Irish prehistoric populations. Patterns of haplotypic chunk sharing are used to identify outlying individuals within populations, while signals and likely geographical sources of recent introgression events from divergent
groups are explored based on chunk length distributions. These methods are particularly powerful when combined with patterns observed in uniparental markers. Maximum likelihood methods for the estimation of genetic relatedness among low coverage samples
are utilized to demonstrate the varied kinship dynamics associated with different megalithic tomb types, which may reflect the potentially diverse and ever-changing social functions of such constructions. Finally, the creation of a dense sample set which spans the window of migratory influx that occurred into Ireland during the Neolithic to Early Bronze Age transition allows us to explore how larger continental-scale upheavals may have manifested, both culturally and genomically, at a local level.
beaker burials, typified by crouched inhumations accompanied by burial goods, do not occur. Nonetheless, we still tend to define
‘beaker burials’ by the presence of beaker pottery or other grave goods.
Excavations of mid-third millennium BC settlements and associated wedge tombs in the Burren, Co. Clare, in the southwest of Ireland,
found beaker pottery in the settlements but not with the burials. An earlier Neolithic court tomb, located in the centre of the
later settlements and wedge tombs, also received burials during the mid-third millennium without any accompanying pottery. Elsewhere,
within the same region, burials were placed in other Neolithic tombs, a portal tomb and Linkardstown type cist, accompanied
by only a sherd of beaker pottery. Clearly there was a complex range of burial options. Choice may have been influenced by real or
imagined relationships with past burials, age, gender, status or several other factors.
This paper will report on the results of three recent wedge-tomb excavations, review the varied burial practices within the Burren and
Ireland during the mid-third millennium, and consider what the range of burial choices might reflect.
By drawing on folklore, contemporary accounts and the results of recent excavations, this paper will consider the avoidance, use, preservation, destruction and perceptions of megalithic tombs on Roughan Hill, and in the wider Burren of Co. Clare, during the post-medieval period.
Bradley, R. & Nimura, C. 2013. The Earth, the Sky and the Water's Edge: Changing Beliefs in the Earlier Prehistory of Northern Europe. World Archaeology, 45(1), 12-26.
Briard, J. [1979] 1976. The Bronze Age in Barbarian Europe: From Megaliths to the Celts, London, Routledge & Keegan Paul.
David, N., Gavua, K. B., MacEachern, A. S. & Sterner, J. A. 1991. Ethnicity and Material Culture in North Cameroon. Canadian Journal of Archaeology, 15(171-177.
Jockenhövel, A. 1980. Die Raisermesser in Westeuropa, München, C.H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchandlung.
Kaul, F. 1998. Ships on Bronzes: A Study in Bronze Age Religion and Iconography, Copenhagen, Publications from the National Museum.
Kavanagh, R. M. 1991. A Reconsideration of Razors in the Irish Earlier Bronze Age. The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 121(77-104.
Kristiansen, K. & Larsson, T. B. 2005. The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
The site comprises a well-preserved wedge tomb situated in the remnants of a circular cairn. As is often the case on the Burren, there was very little stratigraphy and what existed was relatively poorly sealed. However, a substantial assemblage of bone and several artefacts were retrieved that will, with absolute dating and comparative, assist in reconstructing the main phases of the site’s construction and use.
The excavations aimed to establish the date, cultural context and basic construction form of the house-foundations. There are approximately 160 such house-sites on Turlough Hill and they surround two presumably ritual monuments, a cairn and a labyrinthine-like enclosure.
No artefacts were found, however, a good amount of charcoal and other charred material retrieved during the excavation should allow for radiocarbon dating of the remains. Ten samples have been sent to the radiocarbon laboratory in Uppsala and we are currently awaiting the results.
Prior to the excavation, relatively little was visible. The site had only been discovered during an intensive survey in the 1990s (Jones et al. 1996, Site E). A surrounding mound and some possible kerb remnant were also noted during that survey.
Removal of the sod revealed a substantial circular stone cairn, approximately 7 m in diameter, surrounding the chamber (Fig. 1). Where surviving, the outer edge was neatly kerbed with large slabs up to 1 m in length. A second inner kerb-line, most obvious to the rear of the chamber and around 4 m in diameter, was concealed within the cairn (Fig. 2). In terms of sequence, the chamber must have been built first and then the cairn would seem to have been added in two stages; however, it is not clear how much time, if any, there was between these stages.
The chamber was approximately 2 m long and 1 m wide and orientated to the west-southwest. While one side-stone was missing, judging from the front blocking stone and the size of rear of the chamber, the tomb was wider to the front than the rear. The alignment of a possible pinning stone, for the missing side-stone and similar to the stone pinning the extant side-stone, would support this supposition. It would appear that, internally, the chamber was c. 0.9 m wide at the rear and c. 1.1 m wide at the front. The extant side-stone and the front blocking-stone were carefully knapped into shape and the side-stone rose noticeably toward the front of the chamber (Fig 3); at the rear it was c. 0.5 m high and at the front 0.75 m high.
The entire contents of the chamber, the area to the front of the chamber and a section through the cairn, to the northeast of the chamber, were excavated. A substantial amount of cremated and unburnt human bone was retrieved. The majority of the bone came from within the chamber, where it was retrieved from within a layer of soil underlying a layer of stone. There were few notable concentrations that could be interpreted as individual
ii
deposits; rather, the bone appeared mixed throughout the layer of soil. The bone is currently being analysed by Osteoarchaeologist Dr Linda Lynch and Zooarchaeologist Dr Fiona Beglane.
There were no obvious grave goods within the chamber; however, some partially articulated sheep/goat bones, retrieved from under the front of the sidestone, may represent the remains of an offering.
An unburnt, and at least partially articulated, adult was uncovered within the stones stacked up against the north-northwestern outside of the chamber. It sat largely within the voids among the stones; however, some elements that had fallen to the base of the cairn were suspended within soil.
Several lithics were retrieved from and around the cairn. These were mostly debitage and cannot be stratigraphically tied to the burial depositions within the tomb. The assemblage does include one particularly fine flint blade and several other stuck lithics that are not of a local geology. These are being analysed by lithics specialist Dr Killian Driscoll.
Once, the osteological and zooarchaeological analyses are complete a comprehensive program of radiocarbon dating, aDNA and isotope analyses are planned. Two petrous bones have already been forwarded for aDNA analyses and the initial results are promising. The aDNA work is being carried out by Lara Cassidy and Professor Dan Bradley at Trinity College Dublin, and the isotope analysis is being carried out by Dr Rick Schulting’s team at the School of Archaeology, Oxford University. It is intended to get all radiocarbon dates through Queen’s University Belfast.
The thesis begins with a study of past anthropological, archaeological and ethnoarchaeological approaches to, and perspectives on, exchange (chapter 2). It then considers the constraints and opportunities, natural and cultural, which communities engaging in exchange in prehistoric Ireland faced (chapter 3). The body of the thesis, rather than attempting a complete overview of the period, focuses on those aspects which were found to be most profitable to the study of exchange. It employs concepts such as chaîne opératoire, object biographies, materiality and intercontextual archaeology to analyse diverse aspects of material culture, such as metalwork (chapter 4), ceramics (chapter 5), objects of bodily ornamentation (chapter 6), burial monuments (chapter 7) and burial goods (chapters 5 & 6). This is followed by two regional case studies (chapter 8) in which it is possible to take a more complete overview of the Chalcolithic and EBA remains and where the role of exchange in the diachronic trajectories taken by the communities in those respective areas is considered. Finally, extrapolating back out to the broader picture, the insight from the former chapters is combined to facilitate discussion of the major trends in, and the particular or universal aspects of, exchange in Chalcolithic and EBA Ireland (chapters 9 & 10).