Unravelling the secrets of the past with Mayo landscape archaeologist

HIS parents instilling the necessity to have a questioning mind and inquisitive eye has proved an invaluable tool in a Mayo man's archaeological discoveries across Ireland, Africa and the Middle East.

Locations of interest have ranged from a minefield on the Israeli front while serving with the United Nations to the safer confines of unrecorded megalithic tombs in Ireland, including important discoveries on military lands.

Landscape archaeologist Comdt (Retd) Kevin McDonald, a native of Castlebar, will be discussing what his questioning eye has uncovered in a fascinating talk taking place at the Michael Davitt Museum in Straide this Thursday, November 16, at 6.30 p.m. All are welcome.

Here, Kevin talks about his journey of discovery.

In 1996, as part of our summer exams, in the School of Archaeology in NUIG, we were tasked with locating, surveying and writing up 20 known archaeological sites in whatever area we chose. I decided on the parish of Killanena, Co. Clare, as this was where my wife Clare was from.

After checking the Sites and Monuments Register (SMR) for the area I had worked out more or less where I could find 20 archaeological sites but having them marked on a map and locating them on the ground are two very different things.

I decided to go for a run with a photocopy of the SMR and locate a few of these sites so as not to waste time when I wanted to do a survey of each site. I was jogging in the uplands more or less on the border between fields and rough mountain pasture and I was looking for a cashel, which is essentially a stone ring fort. As I scanned all around, I noticed an unusual group of stones in the middle of a field. Thinking they may be from field clearance, I decided to jog down and have a look.

As I approached, I knew straight away that this was far from field clearance but the remains of a megalithic tomb dating back to approximately 3000 BC. Naturally, I went off to get my camera and when I met the farmer who owned the land, I asked him did he mind me taking photographs.

“Ah, them stones are hundreds of years old and there are people from the village buried there,” he informed me. He was more than surprised when I informed him that they weren’t hundreds but thousands of years old, but I was struck by the folk memory of these tombs lasting in the parish as they were a form of collective burial in the Neolithic period in Ireland (4000 to 2000BC).

I was back the following weekend, in more or less the same spot, still trying to find the cashel when I glanced down from the stone wall I was standing on and noticed an unusual stone lying nearby; on closer examination I spotted a similar upright one that had been incorporated into the wall. It turned out to be another wedge tomb.

Before the day was over, and just after I found the location of the cashel I had been searching for originally, I literally stumbled on a third megalithic tomb.

For my survey of 20 archaeological sites, I had found five unrecorded ones: three megalithic tombs, a hilltop enclosure and an early Christian carving called a Chi Roh, which is the letter P superimposed over the letter X. This was inscribed on what I felt was a fallen standing stone adjacent to a number of megalithic tombs on a mountain near Killanena. At some stage, these ‘pagan’ tombs had been ‘Christianised’, which was a common occurrence in the Early Christian period, and the Chi Roh symbol I found may have been associated with this process.

LOST TOMBS OF FINNER CAMP

I was transferred to the 28th Infantry Battalion, which was based in Finner Camp in Co. Donegal, in early 2008. This was a spectacular military base comprising over 750 acres in a dramatic location overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

As usual, I was interested in the archaeology of the area, and I was keen to see a megalithic tomb that was recorded as being within the military lands.

A few weeks later, a chance encounter with a leading archaeologist who was conducting a survey of all the megalithic tombs in Co. Donegal led to an interesting discussion. He informed me that there were originally five megalithic tombs on the military lands in Finner, but only one now remains.

The lost tombs then became the subject of a lengthy correspondence between us as we speculated about their likely fate. He sent me some sketches of the tombs painted by an antiquarian in the 19th century and one of them was quite impressive. It was of a large cairn of stones measuring some thirty-three metres wide and had a passage leading into the centre of the tomb. This was a similar type of tomb as the impressive passage tomb in Newgrange.

I was fascinated by this enigma and started to research it in my spare time. Eventually, after some weeks, I was out for a run one evening and I noticed the setting sun illuminating a very low mound that appeared to form the remains of a large circular structure which on closer inspection turned out to be all that was left of a large circular mound of stones that was one of the ‘missing’ tombs. It was around this time that I discovered a flint scraper dating to the Neolithic and discovered a relatively untouched Neolithic landscape, all within the grounds of the camp.

For further reading on the Lost Tombs of Finner Camp please see Appendix 1.

MILITARY LANDS

While Finner Camp turned out to be a treasure trove of archaeology, it turned out that the military lands at Oranmore, Co. Galway, would also yield up some tantalising secrets.

In 2009 I was based in Renmore Barracks in Galway, and we had access to a large training area that included two firing ranges in Oranmore. This was a large tract of land covering some 770 acres. It was originally built as an airfield for the Royal Air Force before becoming a training area for the Connaught Rangers. It was then subsequently taken over by the Irish Free State in 1921 and continued as a military training area.

I had been shooting there and taking part in exercises since I first joined the FCA in 1976, so I thought I was familiar with at least some of the area. As it transpired, I was going to get very well acquainted with the entire 770 acres.

One winter's day I was summoned to the office of the Battalion Commander who greeted me: “I have just heard that the Department of Defence are trying to sell all the military lands in Oranmore to the Industrial Development Authority (IDA), without informing us. Is there anything there of archaeological interest that might help us keep the lands.”

I told him I was aware that there is a portion of a 7th century ring fort in part of the lands but there is nothing else reported. However, because it has been a closed military area for over a hundred years, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is not something out there that may be interesting from an archaeological point of view.

“Well, what are you waiting for, see if you can find me something useful.”

With those words ringing in my head, I drove out to Oranmore. Wishing to kill two birds with one stone, I decided to bring my training gear with me so I could go for a run through the vast area to the rear of the firing ranges. I had been running for around 15 minutes when I jumped over a low wall and landed in a small circular earthen enclosure that had a tiny internal ditch and an external surrounding mound. It was like a miniature ring fort but in reverse, as a ring fort has an external ditch for defence.

‘Wow, it’s a ring barrow’ went suddenly through my brain. A ring barrow is normally described as a low circular mound, enclosed by an earthen bank and a fosse (ditch). Usually measuring between four and twenty metres, they rarely exceed one metre in height. These monuments can be found on their own but often in groups (there are a number of them on the military lands in the Curragh Co. Kildare). This type of burial, often believed to be of a Chieftain, seems to originate in the Bronze Age but many of them were reused right into the Iron Age giving some of them a date range of between 2400 BC to 400 AD.

I was fairly impressed with this and immediately reported it to the Co. Galway archaeological officer, before returning triumphantly to my Battalion Commander to inform him that on my first day of investigation I had found an unrecorded Iron Age chieftain’s burial. Within a short space of time, I also found a megalithic structure and a moated site.

A moated site is normally described as being a rectangular shaped enclosure, surrounded by a large and deep ditch, and having an internal bank of earth. Further protection would be added to the bank by building a wooden palisade of stakes or planks. These structures are associated with the 13th and 14th century Anglo-Norman colonisation of Ireland and are often viewed as the fortified homesteads of lower-level chiefs or the more important tenant farmers.

The one I discovered in Oranmore is quite large, at least twenty-five metres in length and nearly the same in width. Considering the incredible skill of the British Army cartographers in mapping, not just their military lands, but the entire island of Ireland, I found it unusual that such a site was not recorded on their maps.

Military training areas are usually large expanse of lands, which are normally restricted to the public. These lands are generally free from rural or urban development, cultivation, mining, or other resource extraction activities. Due to their large area, they often host high numbers of endangered habitats and species. They also tend to have generally lower fertiliser and biocide exposure.

In both Finner and Oranmore, it has become obvious that there is huge scope for further investigation into not only the rich archaeology that has remained undiscovered but also an important study area for flora and fauna.

WESTERN SAHARA

In 2012 I was deployed to Western Sahara which is situated south of Morocco and north and east of Mauritania and has a narrow border in the east with Algeria. It covers approximately 126,000km2 and, with an estimated population of around 550,000 people, is one of the least densely populated places on earth.

This is contested territory that is claimed by both Morocco and Mauritania. Previously known as the Spanish Sahara, the Spanish withdrawal in 1976 led to the Moroccans entering from the north, quickly followed by the Mauritanians from the south, both eager to carve up the country. The Frente Para La Liberacion de Saguia el-Hamra y Rio de Oro, or POLISARIO as it is more commonly known, quickly emerged to try and defend the rights of the indigenous Sahrawi people. They fought an extensive and bloody guerrilla campaign against both armies, forcing Mauritania to withdraw in 1979 and to recognise the POLISARIO as the legitimate government of Western Sahara.

Morocco continued undeterred until a ceasefire was brokered eventually in 1991, which saw Morocco controlling two thirds of the country, with the POLISARIO controlling the remaining area. The line of separation between the two forces is commonly known as 'The Berm', which is a 3m high bank of sand and stone.

This impressive feat of engineering can trace its genesis to the Great Wall of China, the Hill Forts of Iron Age Europe, Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, the trench systems of WWI in France, the Maginot Line, the Berlin Wall, the US Mexico wall, the Indo Bangladesh Wall, and the Israeli Palestinian Wall. It commences some 200km inside Morocco and extends for over 2000km in a southwest direction to the Mauritanian border. It has one of the longest minefields in the world deployed on the POLISARIO side.

The United Nations established an unarmed military observer force called MINURSO in 1991 to monitor the ceasefire and oversee the proposed elections that were a part of the ceasefire agreement. To date both sides are in disagreement as to who should be allowed to vote in any such election.

Patrolling in such a harsh and unforgiving area takes its toll on the body and some days the temperatures reached 54 degrees. However, being the least densely populated areas in the world and being more or less under military occupation for decades, it soon became obvious to me that there was an abundance of rich and varied archaeology waiting to be discovered.

I could literally drive for a few hours in any direction, stop the 4x4 I was driving and find evidence of Neolithic activity in the form of flint arrowheads, flint scrapers and various types of burial monuments.

For more detailed reading on my archaeological discoveries in Western Sahara please see Appendix 2.

UN POSTING IN MIDDLE EAST

In 2014 I returned to the Middle East for a two-year posting with UNTSO (United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation). In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed a plan for the partition of Palestine, providing for the creation of an Arab State and a Jewish State, with Jerusalem to be placed under international status. The plan was not accepted by the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab States.

On May 14, 1948, the United Kingdom relinquished its mandate over Palestine and the State of Israel was proclaimed. On the following day, the Palestinian Arabs, assisted by the Arab States, opened hostilities against Israel. On May 29, 1948, the Security Council, in resolution 50 (1948), called for a cessation of hostilities in Palestine and decided that the truce should be supervised by the UN mediator, with the assistance of a group of military observers.

The first group of military observers, which has become known as the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), arrived in the region in June 1948. I was deployed to the coastal city of Tyre in Lebanon, and this had many benefits, as when we are off there is the chance to wander around an area over abundant in archaeology such as the Hippodrome, constructed in the 2nd century BC, which is the second-largest Roman chariot-racing arena ever discovered. For those of you of a certain age, it is also where Ben Hur was filmed.

There is great snorkeling at the edge of the old city and due to a series of earthquakes that devastated Tyre and left much of it below sea level, it is possible to snorkel along sunken Roman roads and pass huge fallen granite columns.

Having an archaeological background, I tend to keep one eye out for the unusual in the landscape and one day while scanning the undulating landscape that rolled away from our hilltop base, I noticed what looked like an unusual rock formation. My Australian colleague suggested it might be a defensive position built during the 2006 war by Hezbollah and laughed outright at my suggestion that if it was what I thought it was, it could be 4,000 to 5,000 years old.

This had to be investigated and, after scrambling up a slight incline, I was pleasantly surprised to be able to explain to my colleague that this had nothing to do with defence and had everything to do with collective burial in prehistory.

We were staring at what I was convinced was a megalithic tomb and not only that, but it was unknown in that it did not appear in any of the records that I would routinely check, so it was a ‘new' archaeological find.

In Ireland, this type of prehistoric burial chamber is termed a wedge tomb and would date between 2500 and 2000 BC, but it is difficult to date comparable structures in the Middle East although a similar date range would seem probable.

The interesting thing about this one is that there does not appear to be any other tomb recorded in the region. This is in itself not unusual as the area has been a bit of a battleground since 1978 so archaeological research has not been very active.

Only a few days later while foot patrolling close to the Israeli frontier we needed to pass through a cleared lane in a minefield to check a position.

Naturally enough, despite the fact that the lane has been cleared of mines, it is important to watch where you place your feet as smaller mines can move over the years due to soil erosion and also by animal movement.

So, with a wary eye on the ground in front of me, we gingerly headed down this one-metre-wide lane, and after about 50 metres I stopped and bent down.

“What's there Mack?” yelled my somewhat anxious colleague as he saw me picking up something.

“You won't believe what I have just found,” I replied as I turned, showed him a piece of a flint arrowhead and proceeded to launch into a condensed version of the prehistoric archaeology of the Middle East.

“Only you,” he muttered. “Only you,” as we continued on with the remainder of our foot patrol.

This interaction was no doubt being well observed by a highly fortified Israeli position over 100 metres away - what the observers thought about my actions is anyone’s guess.

The story of the mad Irishman who picks up ‘things' while going through a minefield has now become part legend, part fact and part fiction in UNTSO as it is repeated for the new military observers that arrive every month!

My late parents Paraic and Bernie instilled into all their children the necessity to have a questioning mind and an inquisitive eye.

This has proved to be very fortuitous in my case, as archaeology became for me, not just a subject to be completed in university, but a lifelong passion.

Appendix 1. The Lost Tombs of Finner camp Co. Donegal

https://www.academia.edu/5748492/THE_LOST_TOMBS_OF_FINNER_CAMP_CO_DONEGAL_Article_

Appendix 2. Patrolling the Berm: Discovering the Landscape Archaeology of Western Sahara.

https://www.academia.edu/5808754/Patrolling_the_Berm_Discovering_the_Landscape_Archaeology_of_Western_Sahara

Appendix 3. The Archaeology of OP 55: Discovering snippets of the Yarmukian Culture on the Golan Heights.

https://www.academia.edu/22330434/The_Archaeology_of_OP_55

Appendix 4. Three unrecorded Megalithic tombs in East Clare.

https://www.academia.edu/2459304/Three_Unrecorded_Megalithic_Tombs_in_East_Clare