"Archaeological Dublin" Dublin Travelogue by Lochlainn

The area around Dublin has been inhabited since the end of the last Ice Age - a continuous human existence who's great antiquity is evidenced by the plain fact that we don't even know what language was spoken by the residents who lived here for the greatest chunk of that timeline! Our own documented "history" starts in the relatively recent era of the coming of christianity to Ireland. Several archaeological excavations around Dublin can throw some light however on those that went before us, how they lived and how indeed they died, what they valued and what they thankfully discarded, and ultimately what contributions they made to forming the landscape that is now Ireland's capital and its hinterlands. I'll attempt here to assemble the more striking and important excavations I'm aware of ...

To a true archaeologist this site shouldn't be included here at all. Not only have the "finds" here of Roman coins been made by metal detectors of dubious legality, but the true significance of the finds is as yet a subject of heated debate. They point to the presence of a Roman fort, and therein lies the hub of the debate. It has commonly been accepted that the Romans never "made it" as far as Ireland, at least as an invasion force. Small finds of Roman coins made here and there over the years indicated at least a trading link between colonised Britain and Celtic Ireland, there is even evidence that the Romano-Britons at some point held certain Irish sites as sacred. The presence of a fortified camp however has knocked this cosy co-existence theory on its head. It's early days yet and the discovery of this possible 2nd century bridgehead is tantalising to say the least, but until the legality of the finds is resolved and proper excavation commences, we are left in a slight quandary. The legend that even the Romans feared the "Fiery Gael" may have to be mothballed for the duration!

Lying at the southern tip of Dublin Bay, Dalkey Island - though tiny - is itself a microcosm of the rich history of Dublin's human evolution. Flint arrow and spear heads have been dated back to the Mesolithic era, with evidence that the island was inhabited right up to the christian era. A short lived church was built there around the 10th century, only to be abandoned when Vikings landed on the island and employed it as a base camp in their colonisation of the entire Dublin Bay region to which the city of Dublin owes its very existence. A later addition to the island was a Martello Tower, one of hundreds built by the British as a shoreline defence against a Napoleonic invasion fleet that never happened, and which are now an integral feature of Ireland's eastern seaboard. The island has been a favourite of archaeologists for many years - most recent digs have attempted to verify the full extent of the medieval christian settlement there and also to throw new light on the Viking usage of the island as a temporary port facility.

This reads more like a horror story than a serious archaeological dig. In the 1970s Dublin Corporation acquired a large site by the river to build a new headquarters. In the course of sinking the foundations on the cleared site workers came across what must be regarded as the most important Viking archaeological site ever found outside of Scandinavia and York in England. Preserved in the muddy banks of the Liffey were the remains of wattle houses, wooden-paved streets, stone hearths and gardens. They had discovered the site of the original Dublin no less! There then ensued a huge legal wrangle over what to do next. I myself remember being part of a 250,000 strong protest march against the Corpo's plans to proceed with their plans before a proper archaeological assessment could be made of the site. The result was a shambles, and ultimately a crime against heritage that the Taleban themselves would have been proud of! A necessarily rushed excavation produced many beautiful finds - leather in particular was preserved remarkably well in the Liffey mud. Bone and wooden artefacts came to light in their hundreds. What has happened to these finds since then has itself been a tale of bureaucratic incompetency. A permanent display area for them has yet to be found. In the meantime the public are treated to tantalising snatches in the national museum and smaller displays here and there, the bulk of the finds still remain hidden away in storage. The history of this dig has been typified by shoddy commercialism, inept administration and outright untruths, so none of us are holding our breath in advance of a satisfactory outcome!

A site I feel very close to - well, I lived until a short time ago just across the road from it. The Iveagh Market was built in 1900 by the Guinness family in the guise of the Iveagh Trust as a charitable act to bring the street traders of Patrick Street and Blackhall Row Market indoors and provide them with a safe and hygienic workplace. It replaced the old Sweetman Brewery which in turn had been built on the older Fair Green - an open air market place just outside the medieval walls of Norman Dublin. I'm including it here as a sort of antidote to the Wood Quay saga, and an indication of how Dublin has radically changed its attitude to preserving its heritage. The archaeology currently being done there is in advance of the old market being re-opened by a property developer who also wants to build a hotel adjacent to it. Although little remains from prior to the building of the brewery, the work there has at least verified the existence and dimensions of the "City Ditch", at one time an integral part of the walled defenses of the medieval city.

This really caught the public imagination when it was discovered. Alas the "time capsule" did not prove to be what the papers had led the public to expect. The story began when Dublin decided to give itself a hideous new "spike" monument on the site of the much lamented Nelson Pillar in O'Connell Street. Work began in 2001 to clear the site of the old pillar foundations and in doing so they found a brass plaque, heavily lacquered in rosin to protect it against the damp, and inscribed with a dedication to Admiral Nelson. Beneath this was a hollowed out stone, the hole also filled with rosin - leading many to hope that it too might contain artefacts related to the foundation of the pillar and give us a glimpse of life in 1803, when the foundation was laid. The hole turned out to be merely a part of the building technique employed by the masons however and contained nothing but the rosin itself. In a way this is doubly unfortunate - the public disappointment deflects from the excitement of the discovery of the plaque itself, in its own way an insight into the values, politics and culture of the people who erected such an imposing (and much loved by Dubs) monument!

Though Kilmainham is now more known to tourists as the location of the infamous gaol, its role in Dublin's history was brought sharply into focus in the 1930s when archaeological excavations revealed extensive Viking burials around the site of the present day National War Memorial Park. The area comprises a ridge of high ground between the rivers Liffey and Camac, and on which a monastery had already stood at the time of the Viking invasion. What was especially interesting about the survey of the site however was the fact that the river at this point is eminently fordable. This, coupled with the fact that the Vikings themselves distinguished in name their "longphort" (harbour) from their town, plus the fact that a monastery implied further domestic dwellings in the vicinity, led many to speculate that here was the original "Baile Atha Cliath" or Town of the Ford of the Hurdles, after which Dublin was named. Given the Liffey's tidal nature it makes much more sense to site a crossing two miles inland and not at the site near the castle where conventional histories place this historic ford! If the English had not arrived and confused everybody - including themselves - by naming the whole caboodle after the castle, we might well have evolved into Kilmainhamites instead of Dubs!

Wagnerian opera fans may be interested in the strong association between the legend of Tristan and Isolde and Dublin, due in no doubt to the common culture shared by Dublin's Norse founders and their North European relatives. The local version is that Tristan travelled from his native Cornwall to claim Isolde as his bride, ended up in a big row with another suitor, and the whole thing ended in adultery, tears, poisoning and general depression. In medieval times Dublin was littered with references to the girl - Chapelizod for example, now a suburb, is derived from the name of a church dedicated to her. A tower of the city walls was also named after her and stood until the 18th century by the ancient portal of Essex Gate when it was demolished to make way for houses. The excavation of its foundation, beside the modern Exchange Street, revealed decapitated human remains (heads of traitors were displayed on city walls as a deterrent under Norman and early English rule). The foundation itself now lies at basement level beneath a modern apartment block but can be viewed (with difficulty) through an iron grating at the roadside - in such a dark and inaccessible location that it cannot even be photographed with a flash. So much for Temple Bar Properties' committment to preserving and displaying the fabric of medieval Dublin! You'd be as well off going to Bayreuth and subjecting yourself to Wagner's five hour MusakFest!

Just to further confuse the issue there is now seeming evidence that the first true Dubs were Brits! The accepted version of events is that the Vikings arrived in the area in 841 and founded the town of Dublin, prior to which little or nothing existed along that stretch of the riverbank. What controversy there has been up to now regarding this version of events centred on where they built their "longphort" or harbour and why did they end up with two names for the same place? Some clue as to why they settled at this particular spot came to light during recent archaeological work in the Temple Bar area - the foundations of a house that predated the Vikings by a century! Not only that, but the layout of the house fits rather neatly into the model of a contemporary English village! Traditionalists might be appalled at the notion that Dublin was founded by the Brits but it's certainly raised whole new questions related to Dublin's origin. It's not inconceivable that the Liffey estuary was the site of a trading post between Celtic Ireland and Saxon Britain, or indeed that British took up residence here. Given the mercenary nature of the Vikings it also makes sense that the presence of a small trading community already "in situ" would have encouraged them to take over the show. The site has now been covered by apartment blocks but the results of the find are still being analysed, and whether we agree or disagree with the implications of the find we have to agree it's already made a lot of the guide book "histories" of Dublin a tad out of date!