The Romans

robp · 25-04-2013 12:00pm

slowburner wrote: »

The Drumanagh material has been fraught with legal difficulties and complexity, however, I understand that negotiations are taking place and there are grounds for cautious optimism.
If memory serves, copper ingots were included in the Drumanagh finds but it is not yet known if these were imported or prepared for export. The ingots are to undergo geochemical analysis to determine their origin.
http://www.bris.ac.uk/research/impact-stories/2012/discovery-ireland.html

Dr. Jacqueline Cahill Wilson's talk and update on the LIARI project's findings last Saturday (20th April), was a truly exciting event. Foolishly, I didn't take notes, so the main conclusions reported below are from memory.

Roman finds in Ireland have been subjected to a complete re-assessment. Conventional wisdom on most of these finds has been that they were either brought back by travelling Irish natives or even deposited much later by mischievous Romanophiles.
Some of these finds were looked at in terms of their stratigraphic context during the re-assessment, and it has been shown that deposition was broadly contemporary with the artefact.
Preliminary strontium analysis of bones from burials previously thought to have been 'Roman style', have shown that those interred were not from Ireland.
One of the most important conclusions drawn, is that the Nore and possibly the Suir and Slaney, were important trade routes with Roman Britain.
The prevailing views on Roman interaction with Ireland are beginning to look decidedly shaky. At the very least, significant doubt is being cast on past interpretation of Roman finds in Ireland.
This talk was simply a 'taster' for the forthcoming publication which is probably still a year away yet.

Very exciting! Did they say how many burials are being tested with strontium analysis? Their time range?

slowburner · 25-04-2013 1:03pm

robp wrote: »

Very exciting! Did they say how many burials are being tested with strontium analysis? Their time range?

Not as such. This short talk was really only a preview of the forthcoming publication.

Neutronale · 26-04-2013 6:31pm

tac foley wrote: »

I, too, have seen the wondrous golden artefacts in museums in Ireland, but there were well-exploited gold mines in Wales - our wedding rings are made of the stuff, as are all my Welsh wife's ear-rings. However, the RE did not run on gold, it ran on grain to feed its military and population, and in that regard, Ireland, with its scattered population over what was then a more arboreal landscape, had nothing to offer that might prompt the Romans to establish a working and viable colony.

Britannia, OTOH, had been an agricultural-based society for a couple of thousand years by that time, with widespread evidence of land-clearance going back to well before the building of the great stone circle in modern-day Wiltshire, even though New Grange substantially pre-dates it.

tac

I must say I've never accepted this simplistic idea that the Romans didnt come here because there was nothing here worth having.

From memory I seem to recall the Romans thought the same about Britain. I think this idea has been proposed and promoted by the British imperialists who always place Britain on a high pedestal and sh1t from it regularly on their neighbour.

Ireland had been a pastoral and arable economy for 4,500 years by the time the Roman plunderers laid eyes on it, farming sheep, goats and cattle while wheat and barley were the principal crops cultivated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Ireland

Did you just pluck your facts out of thin air?

Neutronale · 26-04-2013 6:46pm

The oldest known field system in the world Tac...

From around 4500 BC a Neolithic package that included cereal cultivars, housing culture (similar to those of the same period in Scotland) and stone monuments arrived in Ireland. Sheep, goats, cattle and cereals were imported from southwest continental Europe, and the population then rose significantly. At the Céide Fields in County Mayo, an extensive Neolithic field system (arguably the oldest known in the world) has been preserved beneath a blanket of peat. Consisting of small fields separated from one another by dry-stone walls, the Céide Fields were farmed for several centuries between 3500 and 3000 BC. Wheat and Barley were the principal crops cultivated.

markesmith · 22-05-2013 1:46pm

I think tac's point is that Ireland, lacking a system of towns and cities, would have been more difficult to colonise in an economically efficient way.

slowburner · 28-11-2014 9:17am

The subject of the Romans in Ireland seems to go in and out of fashion.
Link to a recent essay that draws many of the various strands together.

And if you would like to read more on the subject...
http://www.wordwellbooks.com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=1616&Itemid=9

Meathlass · 01-12-2014 10:29am

Richard Warner at a conference on Archaeological Research in the Boyne Valley on Saturday spoke about a sub-rectangular fortification near Newgrange that he believes was Roman (based on its morphology and a very crude piece of Roman pottery).

slowburner · 01-12-2014 8:19pm

Meathlass wrote: »

Richard Warner at a conference on Archaeological Research in the Boyne Valley on Saturday spoke about a sub-rectangular fortification near Newgrange that he believes was Roman (based on its morphology and a very crude piece of Roman pottery).

You have to admire him for sticking to his guns.
I spoke with him not too long ago on the subject of Roman Ireland and contrary to his reputation, I found him to be enormously helpful, open minded and without pre-conceptions. I doubt anyone has carried out deeper research into the enigmatic Tuathal than he. LIARI, I'm sure, owe him a great deal.

slowburner · 03-03-2015 12:41pm

Isotope analysis from two 4th/6th C burials in a multi-phase cemetery near Bettystown Co. Meath indicate that one was from Scandinavia and the other from Portugal/N. Africa.
The crouched inhumations contrasted with the other 53 inhumations. One was a child and the other a young adult female who had a rock placed on her abdomen.

http://irisharchaeology.ie/2015/03/immigrant-burials-in-late-iron-age-meath/

pueblo · 03-03-2015 2:32pm

slowburner wrote: »

Isotope analysis from two 4th/6th C burials in a multi-phase cemetery near Bettystown Co. Meath indicate that one was from Scandinavia and the other from Portugal/N. Africa.
The couched inhumations contrasted with the other 53 inhumations. One was a child and the other a young adult female who had a rock placed on her abdomen.

http://irisharchaeology.ie/2015/03/immigrant-burials-in-late-iron-age-meath/

For the amateurs among us can you spell out what this means? Are these looking like Roman style burials?

dubhthach · 03-03-2015 3:34pm

slowburner wrote: »

Isotope analysis from two 4th/6th C burials in a multi-phase cemetery near Bettystown Co. Meath indicate that one was from Scandinavia and the other from Portugal/N. Africa.
The couched inhumations contrasted with the other 53 inhumations. One was a child and the other a young adult female who had a rock placed on her abdomen.

http://irisharchaeology.ie/2015/03/immigrant-burials-in-late-iron-age-meath/

Now if they'd only extract a viable ancient-DNA sample, be lot more interesting than isotope malarky!

Meathlass · 03-03-2015 3:36pm

I think isotope analysis is fascinating; I wonder how well it would work now with increased access to global products.

Dr Strange · 03-03-2015 4:34pm

Do we know where the isotope analysis was carried out?

slowburner · 04-03-2015 1:46am

pueblo wrote: »

For the amateurs among us can you spell out what this means? Are these looking like Roman style burials?

There is no definitive, or readily identifiable Roman burial practice. Cremation was the norm in the early days of the empire - primarily amongst the well heeled. Flexed or extended burials followed and then there was something of a return to crouched burial in the late 4th and early 5th centuries.
This potted chronology would hold true if one region was in focus. The problem is, we don't really know what region we are dealing with, so we don't know what the 'standard practice' was. Are we dealing with residents or visitors? Where did they come from and why did they come to Ireland? Those are the principal questions and we won't be able to answer them based on the morphology of the graves alone.
We can't say that the style of burial is an indication of Roman identity. We can't say that it's not.
All we can say at this point, is that we have two markedly different burials in a later Iron Age cemetery and that this also happens to coincide with the latter days of the Roman empire. Based on the isotope analysis, the inhumed bodies do not appear to have been born in Ireland. Putting those two tenuous facts together is not grounds for assuming the burials are Roman.
Further investigations are definitely needed. Perhaps, as Dubhtach says, DNA might give us a better picture.
The stone on the woman's* abdomen is not a characteristically Roman practice, as far as I can gather, but it sure is curious.

*the adult burial may not be a woman, or so I've been told. Many of the potentially Roman finds dismissed down through the years, are being revisited.

slowburner · 05-03-2015 1:36pm

The adult female burial from Bettystown, Co. Meath.

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After: Eogan, J. (2010) Excavation of an unenclosed early medieval cemetery at Bettystown, Co. Meath. In Corlett, C. & Potterton, M. Death and Burial in Early Medieval Ireland, Wordwell Ltd., Dublin. p. 110

slowburner · 10-08-2016 7:47am

Here is an outline of the finds from Drumanagh, together with a summary of the LIARI research findings to date.
http://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/worlds-apart.htm

The Romans

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