Achill Island

Irish island archaeology from the Neolithic to the Great Famine

The recent work of the Achill Archaeological Field School examines the islands archaeology from the Neolithic through to the dark days of the Great Famine. Stuart Rathbone explains.

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chill Island is a remote spot on the north west coast of Ireland, separated from the mainland by a narrow sound. It is the largest of the Irish islands, and is divided into a mountainous western half and a low-lying eastern half. Today, the island is all but devoid of trees, and apart from the rocky coastline and mountain tops, the entire island is covered in deep blanket bog. Over the last hundred years, Achill has become increasingly dependant on tourism and today it is virtually the only industry. The landscape

is littered with abandoned cottages, fields and even entire villages dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, dramatic evidence of the farmers and fishermen who struggled to make a living from the sodden land and treacherous waters. But there is another Achill Island, an island of dense forest and lush pasture, dramatic evidence of which is buried beneath the bog. The island was very different during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, before the bogs began to take over from the Middle Bronze Age onwards. Prehistoric houses, tombs, fields, shell middens and preserved forests have all been identified on

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other historians. So, what really happened? This is a subject where archaeology is uniquely qualified to ask questions and to proffer answers. In Scotland, the work on Barra and South Uist has shown a story of population increase to an extent that islands could not support it. But what happened on Achill?

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Details of the deserted village

Achill is dominated by the two great mountains of Slievemore and Croaghaun. Archaeologists have long taken an interest both in Achills fine chambered tombs and also in the traces of ancient agriculture. In recent years, attention has been concentrated on a large deserted village that was occupied in the 18th and 19th centuries. The deserted settlement lies on the foothills of Mount Slievemore, straddling the 70 metre contour. The settlement consists of three distinct groups of houses linked by a pathway. The three groups of houses are referred to as Tuar, Tuar Riabhac and Faiche, although these names are toponyms that post-date the abandonment of the settlement and refer to different types of grazing to be found amongst the ruins. In total, the village stretches from east to west for about 1.5km. In the first edition Ordinance Survey of 1838, 137 houses were recorded, of which traces of 74 houses can still be made out. The buildings are of dry stone construction and the walls often survive up to their original height. Over 90 per cent of the houses are aligned north-south, at right angles to the street. A majority of the houses at Slievemore were one-roomed cabins called byre houses, where livestock were kept at one end during the winter, separated from the humans at the other end by a small channel. This type of dwelling was the prototype of the classic three-roomed house that can still be seen in most Achill villages. South of the middle village is a graveyard and a cilln (a burial ground for the unbaptised, principally children). Within the southern part of the graveyard are the barely visible remains of an early ecclesiastical site, possibly founded in the 7th century AD by St Coleman, who founded a major monastery on Clare Island just to the south of Achill. However, the town does not appear to have had a church. A holy well with his dedication is located in the northern part of the graveyard, although this has been relocated in recent times.

the island and slowly the story of the pre-bog island is coming to light. Over the last 20 years the staff and students of Achill Field School have been exploring the archaeology of two very different islands. The Great Famine of 1840s, when so many people left Ireland and Scotland to settle in America, obviously had an effect on the residents of Achill. The classic account of the Highland clearances was written by John Prebble, a romantic Scottish partisan. This influential account, attributing most of the blame to ruthless landlords, has been strongly criticised by

Above Mount Slievemore, with a small crannog in the foreground. At 672m, this is the highest point on the island and is a popular tourist destination for scenic walks.

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Right Caption to go in here over a few lines donec cursus est eu orci. Phasellus dignissim laoreet sem nam venenatis purus est consequat

Below Houses in Tuar. Below right The flag

floor from House 36.

What was it like actually to live in one of these houses? To investigate living conditions, the Field School has fully excavated two of the buildings in Tuar. House 36 was clearly somewhat superior, as it has a flagstone floor with a cross-drain, and a hearth set against the northern gable wall. The house was surrounded by a fairly extensive garden and we suspect that this was how the inhabitants largely fed themselves. The garden plots revealed a substantial build-up of plaggen soils plaggen soils being artificial soils laboriously built up by using sand and seaweed from the sea shore, and adding in manure. Manure was a central concern of these farmers and most houses have a large manure pit adjacent to the eastern doorway. A substantial horse shoe shaped manure pit with dry stone walls and a cobbled base was excavated in

this position next to House 36. Such a location allows dung from the cattle to be removed easily from the house, and also allows the occupants to keep a close eye on this vital substance. The second house to be excavated, House 23, was less luxurious, for instead of a paved floor there is a simple floor of beaten earth. House 23 had clearly been reconstructed at least once, for a substantial stone-lined cross-drain was found to overlie an earlier and much slighter curvilinear drainage system running from north to south. This drained out through the southern gable-end wall by the street, whilst the northern wall had clearly been moved southwards from its original location. A lean-to structure was attached to the north gable end wall, but this was used merely to store ashes from the fire. Again, there was a large manure pit in the garden

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located immediately outside the eastern door. Was this in effect the toilet? The garden plots lay close to the north (up-hill) and west sides of the building. Excavation between the two buildings has also revealed the pathway that ran through the village. This had a finely laid cobbled surface which had been relaid in its entirety at some point. Was this the work of the village community? Or the work of the landlord deciding to relay the path that ran through the village?

Surprising wealth
The biggest surprise came from the quality of the pottery. The abandoned structures give the impression of dire poverty, but the finds tell a different story, for there is a large quantity of quite good quality imported pottery. The vast majority of the ceramics are refined, white earthenware tableware, many of which were decorated, including sponge-decorated wares from Scotland, English transfer prints, and moulded plain glazed refined white earthenware likely from the Staffordshire potteries. How did these villagers afford such fine pottery? The more utilitarian forms, such as milk pans and storage jars which would be expected to be present in a 19th century rural household, were represented by very few shards of black coarse earthenware. Earlier researchers, such as Professor Estyn Evans, promoted the antiquated aspects of life in the west, but clearly the inhabitants themselves preferred modern and fashionable items from England and elsewhere. The pottery also enables us to date the

Above Views of the fishing village and beach at Dooagh, from the Laurence Collection. Left and below
Caption to go in here over a few lines donec cursus est eu orci. Phasellus dignissim laoreet sem nam venenatis purus est consequat a few linesi. Phasellus

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MARK, PLEASE CORRECT THIS TO HAVE LESS OF AN ANGLE IN THE TILT

abandoned. The biggest question of all is why it was founded there in the first place - which as yet remains unanswered.

Daily life
This leads on to the question of how the villagers actually lived. The answer appears to be on potatoes and cattle. Potatoes were grown in the extensive lazy-bed field systems associated with the village, which are like a smaller hand-dug version of the classic ridge and furrow system. The farming system at Slievemore was known as Rundale, a system of joint ownership of attached areas of land. Each family had their holding of arable land scattered amongst those of the neighbours, and it is here that the potatoes were grown. The livestock were tended through the practice of booleying, which means that animals lived in the houses during the winter, but were moved to mountain grazing in the summer. Booleying, known more formally as lesser transhumance, meant that part of the population moved with the livestock to temporary settlements during the summer. The remains of two booley villages, Annagh and Dirk, are known on the north side of Slievemore. Both settlements have been surveyed with EDM (electronic distance meters) and excavation was begun at Annagh in summer 2009. The settlement at Annagh is thought to be the earlier of the pair, because the two buildings are of the small corbelled stone beehive type. Eight buildings survive at Annagh with walls largely intact; indeed, in one case there is a partially intact corbelled roof. Dirk is a much larger settlement with 19 rectangular and square structures and a rectangular pound, indicative of a much later date. When the occupants of Slievemore moved to Dooagh, these booley settlements were abandoned and some of the houses in the village on Slievemore were reused as booleys. This summer re-occupation lasted up to the 1940s, making Achill the last place in Ireland or Britain where this ancient farming practice took place. Two other booley settlements are known at the western end of the island at Keem Bay and Bunnowna, and new survey work and excavation is due to take place over the forthcoming seasons.

settlement, suggesting that occupation began no earlier than 1750 and ended when it was deserted sometime in the 1850s. Whilst the abandonment cannot be linked directly with the Great Famine, records from the nearby Achill Mission record a long series of poor harvests throughout the middle of the 19th century. The land was becoming impoverished, rents were increased and farming became more and more difficult. They therefore decided to stop being farmers and become fishermen, an option that was not as readily available to mainland residents. Grants were available for fishing boats and so the entire population left Slievemore and moved to Dooagh, where their descendents still live. A photo from the famous Laurence collection taken in the 1890s shows the fishing village that was established at Dooagh. The effect of the Great Famine was clearly not as fierce in Achill as it had been elsewhere. Famine reduced the overall population of Achill Island by only 16 per cent from 4,901 in 1841 to 4,075 in 1851, whilst Ireland in total experienced a 20 to 25 per cent decrease. Even so, after the Great Famine, Achill Island was still over-populated; the population today has fallen to 2,700, and population records show the decline was a steady and ongoing process into the 1970s. The real problem presented by the deserted village is why, in little more than a century from 1750 to 1850, it was founded, grew and was finally

Above A booley house from Annagh, with corbelled roof. Accessible only on foot or by boat, Annagh is one of the most remote parts of Achill Island.

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and early Bronze Age. This was the period of the climatic optimum, when the climate was warmer and drier than it is today. By the late Bronze Age, in the first half of the first millennium BC, the climate had deteriorated, rainfall had increased and the blanket bog that now covers most of Achill was formed. Underlying this blanket bog there are abundant traces of prehistoric landscape on the higher slopes of Slievemore, and a series of sinuous pre-bog walls run directly up the mountain, almost as far as the scree slopes that surround the summit. Survey has revealed all manner of small huts and stone foundations, though limited excavation of two of these huts unfortunately failed to yield any dating evidence. No proper mountain in Ireland is complete without a tomb or two. Six megalithic

A much longer history

In the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, we should probably see Achill through different geographic eyes. Today, going by land, it is somewhat inaccessible. However, in an era of sea travel, Achill may well have been on a main sea route along the west of Ireland, and the different types of Megalithic tombs and other monuments known along the western coasts of Europe mark extensive activity in sea travel. Indeed a real plethora of important Bronze Age sites have been investigated over the last few years along the west and north coast of Ireland, and our impressions of this area are rapidly changing. Of course the west of Ireland demonstrates well the effects of climate change; before the climatic deterioration of the Late Bronze Age, this was prime farming land, but the growth of the bogs changed the landscape for ever. The 18th and 19th centuries are not the only period when Achill was densely occupied. Though little has been identified from the Medieval period or the Iron Age, there is plenty of evidence of activity in the Neolithic

Below Excavation underway of the massive Roundhouse 1. Plan of structure at right.

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tombs have been located on Achill Island; two court cairns, two portal tombs and two which cannot be classified. None of these tombs has yet been excavated and this is an area the Field School may eventually turn to. Just above the village there are two large roundhouses, much larger than the rest, and the big surprise came when we set out to excavate one of these. Excavations have revealed Roundhouse 1 to be genuinely massive in scale, its true size previously masked by the overlying peat. The structure consists of a complicated stone wall with large upright kerb stones forming both the inside and outside faces, and retaining the core of the wall, surviving in places up to 1.7 metres in height. There is a very complicated entrance to the east, consisting of a passage through a wall, edged with large upright slabs and pairs of pillar-like orthostats at either end. The use of these large stone elements lends the structure a positively megalithic appearance. Within the central area a hearth was partially exposed as were two adjacent post holes. A single radiocarbon date of 1411 1210 cal BC has been obtained from charcoal from the buried turf that overlies the collapse of the structure so presumably the structure is earlier than this it is a terminus ante quem. The only artefacts recovered are a fragment of a small plano convex flint knife, a small flint scraper and the fragment of a chert knife, all of which would fit nicely into the Early Bronze Age. What this structure was used for is hotly

Above Roundhouse 1, entrance and wall.

Source Stuart Rathbone rathbone_stuart@ hotmail.com

debated. The simplest explanation is that it was domestic. However, the lack of domestic artefacts is puzzling, and it appears that the design deliberately emphasises the external appearance. It is quite unlike any other building so far recorded in Ireland. Was it perhaps a cult house or a place where certain specialised activities occurred? A second roundhouse is located 50 metres to the east, where limited excavation is planned soon. Will it perhaps help to resolve the question posed by Roundhouse 1? This summer, excavations were begun at Keem Bay on the very western tip of Achill, where a village of at least 40 houses was present in the 19th century. We look forward to sharing those results soon.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
the Achill Archaeological Field School was set up by Theresa MacDonald in 1991, in order to investigate the deserted villages and surrounding areas. The field school runs a range of courses from short introductions for members of the public, longer courses for archaeology students and CPD courses for members of archaeological profession. Read more about the Achill Archaeological Field School on ilovethepast.com and in the Current Archaeology Digs supplement (CA 230). For more information: visit www.achill-fieldschool.com, email info@ achill-fieldschool.com or call +353 98 43564. Further reading: Achill Island: Archaeology, History, and Folklore, Theresa MacDonald, IAS Publications, ISBN 0951997416.

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