This article is from page 2 of the 2012-04-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
THE 500 year-old body of a Clare teenager is helping to paint a clear picture of what life was like for the people of Ireland during one of the most violent periods in Irish history.
Carbon dating of human remains, discovered in a cave on Moneen Mountain, just outside Ballyvaughan, has revealed that the dead person was between 14 and 16 years of age, and was severally malnutritioned.
According to Dr Marion Dowd of IT Sligo, the evidence suggests that the youth crawled into the cave and died, rather than being placed in the cave after death. This suggests that Moneen Mountain was being used as a refuge or meeting place for poor Clare people at this time.
This period, around the time of the Tudor conquest of Ireland, was one of the bloodiest times in Irish history.
“At this time in Ireland, there was religious persecution, a lot of warfare, Gaelic people are being dispossessed of their land and there are lots of famines.
“But to find the remains of one of these individuals and to see, first hand, the evidence of what was going on is very interesting,” said Dr Dowd.
“Another mystery is why the re- mains were in the cave and not in a burial ground – because there were a number of official burial grounds quite close to the cave. It seems that this young person went into the cave, crawled into a small recess in the cave wall and died there.
“This person may have been completely on his own and died in the cave or there may have been a few people hiding out there.”
The excavation also revealed evidence which suggests that Moneen Mountain may have been a significant place for Bronze Age people.
“The other material dates back to 1,000 BC. We discovered a large quantity of broken-up pots and a deer antler. There is something quite unusual about this also, it does not look like a refuge, there was no-one living inside the cave at the time, and we know that the pots were weathered outside,” continued Marion.
“It is possible that these were some kind of special offerings that were placed inside the cave. The material was brought into the cave and deposited very carefully on top of a large rock.
“Broken artifacts can have a symbolic value in prehistoric communities and pieces of pottery can be placed in ritual context.”
Research into the excavation, which was funded by the National Monuments Service, is still being evaluated. Ove ra ll a ve ry we t st a rt t o t h e we e k b u t t h e ra in b e c o m in g m o re sp o ra d ic a ft e r t h a t . Ne xt we e k lo o ks so m e t h in g sim ila r.