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| Lough Gara |
Introduction
In earlier posts I discussed the
crannogs of Lough Gara on the border between Co Sligo and Co Roscommon in
Ireland. Crannogs are partially or entirely artificial island, usually built in
lakes, rivers, and estuarine waters of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. They are
commonly made of timber and stone and are occasionally built on existing rocky
structures. They are widespread in Ireland, with an estimated 1,200 examples
while Scotland has 347 sites officially listed.
It had
been thought that these artificial islands dated from the Iron Age. We now know that crannogs were used for over five thousand
years from the European Neolithic Period to as late as the 17th/early 18th
century. Four Western Isles sites in Scotland have recently been
radiocarbon dated to about 3640-3360 BC in the Neolithic period - before the
erection of Stonehenge's stone circle.
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| Aerial View of crannog in Loch Langabhat, Scotland BBC News Scotland, Highlands and Islands |
Crannogs, or at least platforms,
may have been built on Lough Gara in the Late Mesolithic (5500 to 4000 BC). However,
the practice of building on the shallow shores increased during the Late Bronze
Age (1200–800 BC) and again in the Early Medieval period around 600 AD. Some crannogs
were used as late as the 17th century. The recent research in Scotland points
to some crannogs there being much older than previously thought prompting a
reappraisal of dates for these structures.
Fredengren’s survey of Lough Gara
found piling, timbers and brushwood stretching over a 40m area of white marl
along the north-east shore of Inch Island. The wood deposit formed three
groups, 3-4 m apart. A small number of posts could be seen in the water. One of
the vertical timbers produced a radiocarbon date of 4230–3970 BC, indicating
activity in the latest phases of the Mesolithic, while a brushwood piece
indicated a date in the early Mesolithic, showing that there was human activity
on Inch Island around 7330-7050 BC (Fredengren, 2002).
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| A diver holds a Neoilithic (c 3,500 BC) Ustan vessel found near a crannog in Loch Arnish, Scotland. BBC News Scotland, Highlands and Islands |
Isle of Lewis
Archaeologists Dr Duncan Garrow, of University
of Reading, and Dr Fraser Sturt, from the University of Southampton,
investigated four crannog artificial islands in the Isle of Lewis in the
Western Isles. At one of the sites well-preserved Neolithic pottery had
previously been found on the loch bed. The archaeologists said the crannogs
represented "a monumental effort" through the piling up of boulders
on the loch bed, and in the case of a site in Loch Bhorgastail, the building of
a stone causeway. The archaeologists believe it is possible other Scottish
crannogs, and similar sites in Ireland, were also Neolithic.
Eight radiocarbon dates were
recorded from the structural timbers used in the building of the four crannogs
on the Isle of Lewis and six of these fell within the Neolithic era. The research also shows for the first time
that the pots were likely to have been intentionally placed in the water around
the crannogs.
The condition of the nearly
intact Neolithic ceramic vessels found in the water around the crannogs was
described as “amazing” by Duncan Garrow, who co-authored the paper. “I’ve never
seen anything like it in British archaeology,” he says. “People seem to have
been chucking this stuff in the water.”
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| Neolithic crannog of Eilean Domhnuill, North Uist, Scotland |
Loch Tay
Since 1980 archaeologists have
explored the waters of Loch Tay for crannogs and
have excavated one at Oakbank, just off the village of Fearnan. Preserved in
the loch's cold, peaty waters were structural timbers, food, utensils and 2600-year-old
clothing. They even discovered a butter dish with butter still clinging to the
inside of it.
In 1994 experimental
archaeologists from the Scottish Trust for Underwater Archaeology reconstructed
a crannog on Loch Tay using the same material as the original at Oakbank. The reconstruction
at Kenmore involved building a thatched roundhouse on a timber platform 15m
across, which was connected to the shore by a timber causeway 20m long. The
whole structure is supported on 168 timber piles.
Considerable skill is required to
build a crannog. The first stage was to create an artificial island out of
timber piles. Alder trees, 8-10m long, were used for the piles. Considerable work
would have been required to pull the alder piles into a vertical position. The
original crannog builders then faced the task of how to drive the alder piles
up to 2m into the loch bed using only Iron Age technology. Archaeologists think
that a crosspole would have been lashed to the upright pile and twisted back
and forth to create enough force to drive it two metres into the loch bed.
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| Rathtinaun crannog (Late Bronze Age), Lough Gara, Co Sligo, Ireland. |
Conclusion
Whilst it had been thought that
crannogs dated from the Iron Age, we now know that they were used for over five
thousand years from the Neolithic Period to as late as the 17th/early 18th
century. Dating crannogs is complicated by multi-periods of occupancy as noted,
for example, in the case of Rathtinaun crannog, Lough Gara, where the
foundations date from the Late Bronze Age with evidence of reuse in the Early
Medieval Period.
Archaeologists can only speculate
as to why the Scottish crannogs were built, how they were used, and why they
became places for pottery disposal. Vicki Cummings, an expert in Neolithic
monuments from the University of Central Lancashire suggests the sites’
isolation, and the pottery that surrounds them, could point to rituals that
marked life transitions like the passage from childhood to adulthood.
Paper co-author Duncan Garrow
admits the research is only just beginning. His team plans to conduct a broader
survey to date more crannogs in the Outer Hebrides. In the meantime, the
Scottish findings provides support for the earlier Mesolithic and Neolithic
dates recorded by Fredengren for some of Lough Gara’s sites.
Christina Fredengren (2002) Crannogs: A study of people's interaction
with lakes, with particular reference to Lough Gara in the north-west of
Ireland
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