Thursday, November 29, 2018

Gold Rings from Lough Gara, Co. Sligo


Lough Gara, Co. Sligo
In prehistoric Ireland highly skilled craftsmen used large quantities of gold to make single objects such as torcs, bracelets and dress-fasteners or very small amounts beaten into sheet for lunulae or foil to cover base metal rings. Many years of training, practice and experience would have been required to produce work of such quality.

Lough Gara-type Rings
Gold Ring ornaments (c) National Museum of Ireland
Mary Cahill, in her paper Prehistoric Gold from Co. Sligo (2013), describes a number of gold rings from Lough Gara, known as penannular rings. All but one of the rings are made of base metal covered with gold foil and are referred to as ’Lough Gara-type’ rings. Seventeen such rings are recorded from Ireland of which five are from Co. Sligo. These rings included three from the hoard found at Rathtinaun, Lough Gara, in 1954 and two from the townland of Annaghbeg or Monasteraden on the opposite side of the lake found in the 1960s.
The Annaghbeg Hoard
In 1988 the National Museum of Ireland was contacted by the Curator of the County Museum and Art Gallery, Truro, Cornwall. He had recently seen a small hoard consisting of a pottery vessel and two decorated gold foil-covered rings said to have been found either on the shore or close to the shore of Lough Gara.
After negotiations the hoard was acquired by the National Museum of Ireland and returned to Ireland. This hoard is a rare example of the discovery of prehistoric gold objects in a container and the only surviving example of the use of a ceramic vessel to contain gold or metal objects. It is also recorded that the Rathtinaun hoard was found in a wooden box with two upright wooden pegs beside it which may have been markers.
Mary Cahill describes the Annaghbeg ceramic vessel as:
 … a small coarse-ware pot with thick walls narrowing towards the rim, rounded in form and roughly U-shaped in profile but slightly waisted at the centre of the vessel. The vessel is undecorated. The outer fabric surface is buff coloured, smooth and slightly burnished but quite pitted, perhaps as a result of soil conditions since deposition. Internally the fabric varies from black to buff from base to rim. The base is slightly rounded.
Both foil-covered composite rings were made from a solid led core which is crescent shaped. Each ring is broadly U-shaped in cross-section. The rectangular strip of gold foil used to cover the ring had to be carefully fitted and stretched over the outer surface of the ring.
The rings are decorated with a simple pattern of lines and dots which have been lightly incised on the surface of the led core before wrapping the ring in the gold foil. Each face of the rings has been scored with a series of radial lines drawn across the surface. 
Very little gold was required to wrap the rings but considerable goldsmithing skills were essential to beat an ingot into an extremely thin foil and to complete the application of the foil cover. Both rings are the same size, weight and similarly decorated and were clearly intended to be a pair.


The Rathtinaun Hoard
Amber Necklace from Rathtinaun Hoard, Lough Gara, Co. Sligo
(c) National Museum of Ireland
Another gold ring was found during the excavation of Crannog 61, Rathtinaun, Lough Gara, by Joseph Raftery in 1954. It is a very small sold gold ring which narrows towards the terminals and is slightly thickened at the ends (Fig. 5). The ring is 1.3cm in maximum diameter and weighs just 5g.
A further three penannular rings in the Rathtinaun hoard are of the same type as those from Annaghbeg but with some important differences in terms of size, weight and the quality of craftsmanship. The Rathtinaun specimens show a much higher degree of workmanship. For example, the decoration on these rings is more complex and more skilfully executed. Two of the three rings from Rathtinaun form a pair and resemble the Annaghbeg rings closely in form.
The Rathtinaun hoard is rare because of the mixture of metals and organic material, the type of objects in the hoard and the exotic nature of some artefacts. It also includes objects made of tin which is very rarely used on its own as a metal, boars’ tusks, amber beads and an unusual bronze pin.

Bronze Age and Iron Age Gold
Gold Lunula from Coggalbeg Hoard - Early Bronze Age
(c) National Museum of Ireland

It remains unclear why lead was used in the making of these rings. Lead has been in use since the Middle Bronze Age as an additive to the usual copper/tin alloy, bronze, because it improves the ductility of the metal. Like tin, lead was rarely used on its own.
Although these objects are small, they are very heavy because their cores are made from lead. From the seventeen examples known to date, eight form matching pair being of similar size, weight and decorative style. It is possible that these rings are ear ornaments or ear weights. These items might also have been used as hair rings but when used as a pendant form of ear ornament the rings would be seen to their best advantage. The single rings may not have been used in pairs raising the possibility of their use as nose ornaments.
 Scholars have noted the difference between gold used in the Bronze Age and Iron Age. Consequently, at least sixty items of goldwork from Late Bronze Age have been reassigned to the Iron Age period. Mary Cahill states:
During the Bronze Age the amount of silver present varies but is never greater than 15% whereas during the Iron Age the silver content is much higher and can be as high as 25% to 30%.
 A resurgent gold-working tradition can be seen in the Iron Age when, for example, ribbon torcs were produced in significant quantities. Ribbon torcs have been recorded mainly from counties in the northern half of Ireland – Antrim, Cavan, Derry, Donegal, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo – although some have been recorded in other counties also. They date mainly from the third century BC to the 2nd Century AD.
Given the quantity and range of artefacts from Lough Gara it is hardly surprising to find evidence of goldworking.

Based on an article by Mary Cahill Prehistoric Gold from Co. Sligo in ‘Dedicated to Sligo: Thirty-four Essays on Sligo’s Past’. Editor: Martin A Timoney (2013)
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