Hi Kernos, Hi Eilthireach, great topic and posts. As you say Eilthireach, an answer could constitute a book! Gentlemen I would love to join in discussions in full but have to cut down my time on this board as I've a deadline getting rather urgent and I can't stay and play too much!
But just give some examples of possible archaeological evidence from because as you said Kernos
it can be still in the ground.
Bearing in mind, I'm not an archaeologist and have no training in this, so some of the below is speculative but on reasonable assumptions and similar/concordance in documentation....just to be upfront about that right away!
1.
Ceremonial structures:
Emain Macha (Navan Fort) in county Armagh, N. Ireland, in mythology and history was the seat of the Ulaid (ulstermen) and ruling place for the kings thereof. It is contains the remains of a ceremonial structre dating, I think, into iron age period or certainly with use in that period. The ceremonial building was a radial arrangement of multi-layered wooden posts and stones laid out around a centrally placed oak pillar, with a western entrance to the setting sun. The whole structure seems to have been burned (perhaps as a sacrifice or to mark an event or juncture point of something) - it is evidence of some sort of ceremonial/spiritual practice in the pre-Christian period.
[Ref: Chris Lynn, Navan Fort: Archaeology and Myth, Wordwell Books, 2003]
Lismullin and Baronstown are/were two sites discovered recently close to Tara in Meath, Ireland. I think dating puts them about 2000 yrs old but I'm recalling that from a press article rather than any published reports. They are both believed to have been ceremonial in function and described as a henge. Excavations started on both but incredibly and outrageously, as you probably know,
Baronstown has been destroyed completely by government contractors bulldozing the sites for M3 motorway construction. Lismullin is under a temporary preservation status as the EU commission have written to the National Roads Authority to halt destruction of this site. That said, it's very fragile and the decision previously was that it would be "preserved by record" - ie. explored a bit, recorded, then bulldozed. We'll see what happens with the EU order. Protest and campaigning against the M3 continues.
(To anyone reading this: we need as many letters of protest to the Irish government as possible - see all the "Save Tara" /"please write a letter" threads for address details)
Archaeological reports are pending I think, although there may be preliminary reports on both sites on
http://www.savetara.com or
http://www.tarawatch.org (Check links at the side for archaeological findings and reports to the minister for environment)
back on topic,
2. Coligny Calendar
(Reference info from a paper by Prof Eoin MacNeill, Eriú 10 1925/1926)
Bronze calendar fragments found at the site of a temple in area of Lyons, France, containing calendrical calculations on divisions of months and days covering about 5 solar years and referring to a druidic cycle of time calculating by full moon and division of each month into two sets of days.
Date
The month names and words related to them are in celtic language written using roman letters (but without any other roman influence and it does not accord time per the roman calendar). MacNeill states that the roman lettering is suggestive of the
Aedui a celtic tribe neighbouring the territory of the Sequani, (and here's one for you Kernos! whose coins date to about 63 BC and have roman letter inscription) MacNeill puts the date of the calendar to between first half of first century AD or second half of previous century. The date not later than Claudius' reign and maybe during that of Augustus.
Druidical elements
The calendar is the work of a learned caste, familiar with astronomy and reckoning of time. It corroborates Caesar and Pliny's accounts of the druids calculating time on the basis of the moon, with special importance on specific days. It shows good evidence of druidical theory on time and nature - each month having light half/dark half division (this light/dark half symbolism as is found throughout celtic mythos and even in Hindu lore and calendar, perhaps evidence of both stemming from a common Indo-European culture). Each month has a bright half and dark half separated by the word ATENOUX and months are qualified as good or bad with the words MAT and ANM (maybe "bad" is a bit too strong, but it is a negative prefix in opposition to MAT (irish "maith" = good) and it classifies days into "good day" and "day".
The names of the months are celtic words with cognates in other celtic languages and meanings based on agricultural activities, climatic division of the year and marking juncture points of light and dark half of the year in month and solstice names.
3., Stone inscription.
Ogam stone 19 (reference number to the Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum - RAS Macalister, 1925 &49) is an Irish ogham stone in County Kildare which is unusual in that it has mixed Latin/Irish inscription (Latin is more a feature of British-located ogham inscriptions in former Irish colonies). I haven't seen this stone or the photographic plate for it but I'm sure it's on the "Fios Feasa" CD of ogam stones if anyone has it.
I think it's OVANOS AVI IVACATTOS - OVAN grandson of IVACATT.(Irish part of the ogam inscription) with accompanying latin is IVVE N/R E DRVVIDES (the N/R are two proposals for the letter there). The form of the inscription would point to a primitive Irish period (about 500AD) as apocape has not occurred (truncation of the word endings/ loss of terminal sounds due to linguistic changes circa mid 6th C onwards -the "archaic Irish" period).
I need to check this out with someone who knows more but I would propose "Yewbattler" for the latter ancestor name (as IVA-usually is the word for Yew in ancestor name-ogam inscriptions and CATT is "Cath" - "battle" or "fight"). The first part of the name, OVAN I couldn't really guess at. As it's written it sounds phonetically like the modern Irish male name Eoghan (pron "owen"), a name also coming from yew) pronounced *Owen* but if it were a name from "yew" it should have the IVA prefix in the prim Irish era
I think.
The possibility is that the second word DRVVIDES does indeed refer to Druids in primitive Irish.
eg. In Old Irish (about 7thC onwards) Druí is the masculine dental stem for a druid (singular) and Druid is the nominative plural. In the primitive Irish period, pre-apocape, the old ending -es would still have been in place in the plural form.
Kernos you might want to look up the McManus book on ogham p.61 where this stone is mentioned briefly. I note a PRIA journal reference in the back to macalister's paper on this stone, so if I can grab that, I will. However Macalister proposed a different meaning of translation of the full inscription but that has been negated long since. I'm not sure who has worked on this inscription recently. I must try to find updated reference to it!
Also - just in terms of relating names from myth tales in which druids occur to archaeological record....names featured in the myth tales are also represented on ogham stones in the historical period. Eg. CATTUBUTTAS (primitive Irish of Cathbad, a name popular in early Ireland and the name given to the chief Druid of Ulster at the time of King Conchobar macNessa of the "Ulster Cycle"). The point I'm making here is not that the ogham inscription is Cathbad the Ulster arch-druid, but rather the continuity of names in literary and historical material record.
I think I'm wandering of point somewhat......!
So - just some examples of pre-Christian pagan ceremonial sites and Christian-period ogham inscriptions, one with indeed a possible commemoration of a druid and a calendar that points to druidic theory and learning and understanding of time and space in origin.
I guess one would have to
(a) read plenty of archaeological reference books/papers with evidence of pagan ritual/ceremonial artefacts from the period cited, and relate it to the literary record to see what tallies.
(b) Visit the museums full of the stuff with an expert on same.
Perhaps someone else here may have that training and could discuss the material culture evidence for druidry/pagan practices of the iron-age period? Those of us who are learning and working with language and literature are limited to those sources unless we gain training in archaeology or collaborate with someone who can help research concordances between the written and the material.
Right. That’s my “swansong” for a while.
All the best!
Beith
Narvl Years
