VIKING PERIOD IN IRELAND.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 14, 14 December 1932, Page 2

VIKING PERIOD IN IRELAND.

EXCAVATION OF LAKE DWELLING Discoveries of unusual importance to Irish archaeology have been made in the neighbourhood of Moate, Co. Westmeath, as a result of four months’ work by the Harvard University Archaeological Expedition. At Ballinderry, near Moate, a erannog or lake dwelling of the Viking period has been excavated, and at Knockast, not far away, an early Bronze Age cairn hns been dug. The work on both sites has been directed by Dr. H. O’Neill Hencken, of the Peabody Museum. The finds, all of which can be dated to the neighbourhood of 1000 A.D., give some indications of the character of the inhabitants. Nearly a ton of animal bones—cow, sheep, goat, pig, red deer, and a very small and agile type of cat —showed that the peopje were herdsmen and to some extent hunters; numerous revolving querns of stone and the coulter of a plough show that they practised agriculture on the mainland. Amongst a quantity of bronze pins and ornaments, was a tenth century gilded pin ; a silver kite-shaped brooch and a wooden bow help to fill in the picture of life in Central Ireland in the tenth century. A GAMING BOARD. All these objects have been presented to the National Museum of Ireland by the landowner, Mrs Richard W. Bayley, of Ballinderry, but the two most important finds are a gift to the Museum from the expedition. The first is a bronze hanging-lamp (obviously a descendant of the RomanoBritish and Anglo-Saxon hangingbowls). a pointed oval in shape Diin. long, Tin. wide, and 2Jin. deep. It is suspended by three animal heads and ornamented on the bottom by an elaborate pattern of engraved rosettes. The other find, a wooden gamingboard 9iin. square, was found broken in two. This board contains ,49 holes laid out in a square, the middle and corner holes marked off by incised lines, and the whole framed with various tenth-century patterns, including the North British or Manx vertebral pattern, the ring-twist, a key. pattern, and other interlacing ornament. The oval handle is carved into a rough human head of Viking type, and at the opposite side is an animal licad. This object, which appears to belong rather to Northern Britain or the Isle of Man thar to Ireland, but hears elements common to the early Christian art of the British Isles us a whole, is the finest object of the Viking period ever found in Ireland.