Winter 2016 Volume 30 No. 4 Issue No. 118

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CONTENTS

F E A T U R E S

10 The archaeology of Armageddon

14 Getting to the point

16 Bishopsland: settlement above the Golden Falls

21 Know your monuments: Saltmaking and food preservation

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26 Trench warfare—in the Phoenix

Park!

32 Bright sparks

36 Can you show the archaeology of Ireland in one map?

38 Ireland—land of the yew?

41 Another Holy Ship—sailing high in the sky in the Irish midlands

L A R S

R E G U

04 News

07 Obituary

08 Net news

09 Quote…unquote

44 Events

45 Book news

50 Hindsight

Archaeology Ireland Winter 2016

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WALLS PAST AND FUTURE

The recent presidential election in the United States of America highlighted many of the more unpleasant aspects of political discourse. The past political culture was pitched against a future political culture full of unknowns. Curiously, though, an old-fashioned trait came to the fore, the almost archaic use of the political catchcry.

Whatever you may think about the political philosophies of president-elect Donald J. Trump, he and his election team showed themselves to be masters of such mnemonic phrases. I am quite sure that one particular phrase, repeated seemingly ad nauseam, achieved a resonance among archaeologists and historians. Trump’s ‘build a wall’ was amplified later by the promise to ‘build a great wall’.

The threat to establish a physical wall marking the length of the border with Mexico has unnerved many American voters, even some of those who favoured Trump. They fear its implications for the future.

We know that walls are useful things. In the case of a house, they define the inner space, restrict access, hold up the roof, retain heat, provide shelter from the elements and ultimately create an environment that the inhabitants can call home. Territorial or border walls, like the walls of a house, restrict and control access, but they have other functions and roles that far surpass the characteristics of any humble abode.

Such great walls not only embody physical qualities but can also be metaphors for political, economic and geographic powerstruggles, leaving legacies and memories long after they have fallen into disuse.

Great walls cover long distances and require the support of and contributions from the people whose well-being is to be protected. We are reminded of some of the more obvious examples of the great wall projects that were undertaken in antiquity: the Long Walls in Athens in the mid-fifth century BC; the Black Pig’s Dyke, apparently forming a territorial boundary in Iron Age Ireland; and the Antonine Wall and Hadrian’s Wall, built in the early centuries AD, marking the outer limit of the Roman Empire in Britain. Of course, a great wall par excellence is the Great Wall of China, begun in the Ming Dynasty from the fourteenth century onwards and estimated to traverse thousands of kilometres.

It was an American president, John F. Kennedy, who paraphrased the poet, philosopher and journalist G.K. Chesterton when he warned: ‘Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up’. But in a more thought-provoking quote from his book What’s wrong with the world (1910), Chesterton pitched the value of the past against the future when he wrote:

‘The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past I find already covered with illegible scribbles, such as Plato, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as narrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulent as humanity. And the upshot of this modern attitude is really this: that men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.’

Tom Condit

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