Study on Ritual wood burning in Iron Age Ireland.
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There is lots of evidence of current - symbolic - model head collection ... in my living room today for instance. Skulls and heads in general are still important ...
Yes, and of ritual human sacrifice too, but no evidence of the combination of ritual burning and skull depositing like in the Irish site.
No, boatmans.
You collect skulls? I have quite a few stuffed animals..
Game trophies, plus a couple of birds of prey I found killed by traffic in Sweden.
Nor anywhere else. Heads preserved in cedar oil and shown to honoured guests. Skulls inset in stone pillars so heads were important but to claim anything ritual for burning and skulls in Ireland is pure speculation. The lack of such a record elsewhere is indicative.
Representations of human skulls and the odd bird and rodent skull plus badger skulls in my woodland camp...
That is exactly the problem, this is a unique site, the only one found so far.
But it can not be a coincidence, it is too elaborate and complex.
Such a pity we do not have a time machine, or at least written records.
Had Ireland been conquered by the Romans, we might have at least a little bit of info.
Many years ago I was helping out on a dig in Sweden of a Viking settlement, I was digging a midden.
It was interesting to be in the discussions after the dig, it was a type of brainstorming.
We did find human remains in the midden, which was interpreted as slaves being disposed off crudely.
This was before the DNA tech, so we could not know where the people ( slaves?) originated from.
There's loads of information; Irish stories, tales and myths are full of detail, as are things like the King's Lists (they even recorded the Pictish kings 
)
Romans were incredibly biased towards Romanism, they aren't an unbiased account by any means.
Context, always context; and undisturbed stratigraphy rules all
M
) Romans were incredibly biased towards Romanism, they aren't an unbiased account by any means.
Context, always context; and undisturbed stratigraphy rules all
M
But it is very difficult to accept the myths and tales as fact, until they have been collaborated by archeology.
It was a huge stem in accepting that the myths and tales could have a true background when they started following the Icelandic Sagas and discovering archeology according to the sagas.
The second (propably Viking?) settlement discovered recently in Canada was a nice confirmation of their travels to the Land of the Vines.
It was a huge stem in accepting that the myths and tales could have a true background when they started following the Icelandic Sagas and discovering archeology according to the sagas.
The second (propably Viking?) settlement discovered recently in Canada was a nice confirmation of their travels to the Land of the Vines.
Take the fulacht fiadh, a pit in which water seems to have been heated by hot stones. Purpose to cook deer killed by a hunting party or some to brew beer or to help bend planks of wood or ritual bath especially for a king and possibly a dead horse or anything else they might need a quantity of hot water for,.perhaps even pre-shrinking cloth.
That minds me; I have a book on those, and the burnt mounds of cracked stones that accompanied them. If I come across it I'm happy to pass it along.
M
M
In general, yes, but often the coroboration comes in other ways. Written descriptions that match and overlap, like dendrochronology, from assorted sources.
M
Yes, in many cases, but in most cases the overlap can be that travelling people have spread tales around, then there have been adopted and changed to suit the own culture.
It may be a bit of "von Daniken" thinking, but so many myths that we have no real proof for ( archeology, writings) can be explained with logic and our knowledge of history.
Scandinavian Iron Age and the Viking era are quite close to me.
Not only the myths and archeology, but the customs, foods and such too.
I know ( knew in many cases, dead now) some old folks in the Lofotens. I managed to get a lot of info from them about life in general before "our modern age".
Many customs, foods and general way of life have not changed much since the Viking times in that area. WW2 and the recent economic upswing ( Oil in North sea and Barents sea) did change the life for them a lot, but many food customs are unchanged.
But they too are changing.
But now I am starting to ramble incoherently....
It may be a bit of "von Daniken" thinking, but so many myths that we have no real proof for ( archeology, writings) can be explained with logic and our knowledge of history.
Scandinavian Iron Age and the Viking era are quite close to me.
Not only the myths and archeology, but the customs, foods and such too.
I know ( knew in many cases, dead now) some old folks in the Lofotens. I managed to get a lot of info from them about life in general before "our modern age".
Many customs, foods and general way of life have not changed much since the Viking times in that area. WW2 and the recent economic upswing ( Oil in North sea and Barents sea) did change the life for them a lot, but many food customs are unchanged.
But they too are changing.
But now I am starting to ramble incoherently....
Hi folks, sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this post, but I really am surprised it has spurred such discussion.
The reason this article caught my eye is partly because of my own habits when collecting firewood. I spent 20 years in the oilfields, where it's advised that a lazy man knows all the easiest ways of doing things. I see myself as a working man, and try to do things in a workman-like manner. As such, I'll select oak, Scots pine, beech, ash and birch in that order [or preferably 6,000 year old pinewood if I can find it], firstly because of their qualities as firewood and secondly because these are the most commonly found hardwoods in Scotland. It irritates me if someone brings sodden wood to the fire, because part of the energy for drying it comes from my effort. Using that same "workman-like" analogy, I think it's a grave error to equate the things we do as passtimes to those day to day activities upon which the very quality of life of our ancestors depended, and ignores the plethora of skills every man and woman carried as part of their knowledge.
I agree with Toddy, that interpretation of archeological data is largely subjective. Archeologists and anthropologists often will attach a "ritual significance" to anything they can't explain, and when they attempt to counter that with a belt and braces approach, you end up with a carved stone effigy found in Orkney that may be a child's toy, [well, the two and a half ton version found in Turkey certainly wasn't a child's toy], or bird-head symbols in the Wemyss caves, Fife, because of the beak and two eyes, which are very obviously the same female fertility symbols found all over Eurasia and Africa. You don't need flowery language to admit that you might be wrong!
What really sold me on the notion of purposeful selection of woods is the suggestion that these proportions, according to the data, are too repetitive to be accidental. It makes perfect sense that hazel would be a main source of fuel, but I wonder at the proportions of oak, ash, rowan, elm and cherry, and their likely distribution over a convenient gathering area, and why there appears to be no evidence of beech, which will happily drop a good night's fuel supply straight on your head if you don't keep your wits about you. It would be interesting to see a close interpretation of pollen counts from peat samples taken in the immediate area, because I have a suspicion that the flora may well have changed significantly over a 400 year period during the Iron Age.
As for the skull fragment, c'mon, skull fragments weren't just kicking around to have accidentally landed on top of these deposits. There is evidence of conflict in Scotland over ancestral remains, the theory being that if I'm in possession of your ancestral remains, I hold a claim on your property, inheritance and heritage. Every 21st Century Fifer understands that, as they say, it taks a lang spoon to sup wi a Fifer!
As for the "sacred head" and the reliability of local mythologies, the most damaging mythologies spring from the modern day, as you will see in Wikipedia's habit of providing Gaelic translations of place names where Gaelic was never spoken. I was always told the name Inchgarvie [an island in the Forth] meant Inch of the Head, and there's a very provocative local myth that's where the Fife Pict spiked Athelstan's head on a pole after the battle of... wait for it... Athelstanford, and I heard that from my grandparents, who never even knew that Athelstan would pop up missing his head one day.
Pango.
The reason this article caught my eye is partly because of my own habits when collecting firewood. I spent 20 years in the oilfields, where it's advised that a lazy man knows all the easiest ways of doing things. I see myself as a working man, and try to do things in a workman-like manner. As such, I'll select oak, Scots pine, beech, ash and birch in that order [or preferably 6,000 year old pinewood if I can find it], firstly because of their qualities as firewood and secondly because these are the most commonly found hardwoods in Scotland. It irritates me if someone brings sodden wood to the fire, because part of the energy for drying it comes from my effort. Using that same "workman-like" analogy, I think it's a grave error to equate the things we do as passtimes to those day to day activities upon which the very quality of life of our ancestors depended, and ignores the plethora of skills every man and woman carried as part of their knowledge.
I agree with Toddy, that interpretation of archeological data is largely subjective. Archeologists and anthropologists often will attach a "ritual significance" to anything they can't explain, and when they attempt to counter that with a belt and braces approach, you end up with a carved stone effigy found in Orkney that may be a child's toy, [well, the two and a half ton version found in Turkey certainly wasn't a child's toy], or bird-head symbols in the Wemyss caves, Fife, because of the beak and two eyes, which are very obviously the same female fertility symbols found all over Eurasia and Africa. You don't need flowery language to admit that you might be wrong!
What really sold me on the notion of purposeful selection of woods is the suggestion that these proportions, according to the data, are too repetitive to be accidental. It makes perfect sense that hazel would be a main source of fuel, but I wonder at the proportions of oak, ash, rowan, elm and cherry, and their likely distribution over a convenient gathering area, and why there appears to be no evidence of beech, which will happily drop a good night's fuel supply straight on your head if you don't keep your wits about you. It would be interesting to see a close interpretation of pollen counts from peat samples taken in the immediate area, because I have a suspicion that the flora may well have changed significantly over a 400 year period during the Iron Age.
As for the skull fragment, c'mon, skull fragments weren't just kicking around to have accidentally landed on top of these deposits. There is evidence of conflict in Scotland over ancestral remains, the theory being that if I'm in possession of your ancestral remains, I hold a claim on your property, inheritance and heritage. Every 21st Century Fifer understands that, as they say, it taks a lang spoon to sup wi a Fifer!
As for the "sacred head" and the reliability of local mythologies, the most damaging mythologies spring from the modern day, as you will see in Wikipedia's habit of providing Gaelic translations of place names where Gaelic was never spoken. I was always told the name Inchgarvie [an island in the Forth] meant Inch of the Head, and there's a very provocative local myth that's where the Fife Pict spiked Athelstan's head on a pole after the battle of... wait for it... Athelstanford, and I heard that from my grandparents, who never even knew that Athelstan would pop up missing his head one day.
Pango.
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