The Archaeology of Livestock and Cereal Production in Early

813 Pages·2011·8.87 MB·English

E M A P (EMAP2)
ARLY EDIEVAL RCHAEOLOGY ROJECT
Reconstructing the Early Medieval Irish Economy
EMAP Report 5.1
The Archaeology of Livestock and
Cereal Production in Early Medieval
Ireland, AD 400-1100
Finbar McCormick, Thom Kerr, Meriel McClatchie
and Aidan O'Sullivan
December 2011
Grant No. AR02180
UCD School of Archaeology
Irish National Strategic Archaeological Research
(INSTAR) Programme 2011

The Early Medieval Archaeology Project
(EMAP):

Project Report 2011

The Archaeology of Livestock and Cereal
Production in Early Medieval Ireland, AD
400-1100.

By

Finbar McCormick, Thom Kerr, Meriel
McClatchie and Aidan O'Sullivan

Early Medieval Archaeology Project (EMAP 2) Report 5:1

December 2011

Report submitted for

Irish National Strategic Archaeological Research
(INSTAR) programme 2011

Ref: AR02180

Forward
EMAP Report 5.1 deals with the archaeological evidence for agriculture in early
medieval Ireland. It is comprised of three sections. The first section provides a general
overview of agriculture in early medieval Ireland through an examination of the various
strands of evidence for agricultural production. It seeks to define the agricultural
landscape of the period thus providing a context for the other parts of the report. The
archaeological evidence for plant and animal remains is covered in fuller detail in
sections two and three. Part two, prepared by Meriel McClatchie, evaluates the
archaeobotanical and plant remains evidence for this period and includes a gazetteer of
sites with seed assemblages, most of which is derived from the ‘grey literature’ and
unpublished sources. Part three, prepared by Thomas Kerr, applies the same template
to the zooarachaological study of the period. As with the plant remains, most of these
assemblages have not been previously published and are derived from the large body of
‘grey literature’ that has emerged during the last two decades. Both gazetteers are
accompanied by a discussive overview of the material which demonstrates how this
contributes to the understanding of the settlement economy of the period.
Both the plant remains and animal remains studies show that certain centuries within
the early medieval era produce more settlement evidence than others. They also
suggest that here are regional patterns of animal husbandry and cereal production
present during the early medieval period. These findings indicate that there was a lower
degree of uniformity in farming practice across Ireland than previously indicated, and
imply that future research on early medieval period may need to acknowledge some
degree of regionalism.
The authors would like to thank all those excavators and specialists whose reports are
referred to prior to their final publication and especially the Heritage Council (INSTAR)
which financed the project.

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Table of Contents
Section 1:
The Farming Landscape of Early Medieval Ireland 4-44

Section 2:
The Plant Remains from Early Medieval Ireland 45-60
Appendix 1: Charred/waterlogged plant remains recorded 61-67
Plant Remains Gazetteer P1-P222

Section 3:
The Animal Remains from Early Medieval Ireland 68-109
Animal Remains Gazetteer A1-AV

Bibliography 110-144

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Section 1:

The Farming Landscape of Early Medieval Ireland

Introduction:

Early medieval Ireland was an overwhelmingly rural landscape, with individual farmsteads (raths and
crannogs), fields, and route-ways set in a highly managed agricultural landscape. In this rural landscape,
farming was the constant in people’s daily lives. The majority of the community, especially the ordinary
and un-free members of society, such as the low-status commoners, hereditary serfs and slaves, would
have spent most of their lives at work in the fields - herding cattle, sheep and pigs, ploughing, sowing
and harvesting crops, or building and repairing field-walls. In the home, the daily lives of men and
women would have been dominated by domestic activities relating to agriculture, whether this was in
terms of preparing milk and cheeses, grinding grain for flour, salting meats for winter storage, or
spinning and weaving wool.

Agriculture, however, was not only important in terms of subsistence. It was also the key element in the
organisation of early Irish society. Whether they were a lord or a slave, most people would have
depended for their social status, subsistence and livelihood on the agricultural produce of the land.
Kinship and community, social status and gender roles – these were all organised around the patterns of
land-use and agricultural labour. For these reasons, agriculture and economy have to be seen as key
aspects in the study of early medieval Irish society. Documentary sources emphasise the role of pastoral
farming, particularly cattle farming, during the early medieval period, though the archaeological evidence
for this is largely limited to post-consumption skeletal remains. Archaeological features representative of
arable farming – fields, mills, kilns, etc. – however, suggest a more mixed pastoral/arable farming
economy.

Faunal evidence indicates a diversification in livestock-rearing from the ninth century onwards,
characterised primarily by a decline in the importance of cattle (McCormick and Murray 2007). Kerr
(2007, 114-16; 2009, 72-74) shows a change in the settlement pattern at the same time with a growing
preference, at least in the north of Ireland, for high-status settlement in good arable areas. The ninth
century is also marked by a significant expansion in horizontal mill construction (Brady 2006, 39-68).
Much of this evidence implies an increase in the importance of arable farming. The documentary
evidence, especially the Saint’s lives, suggests a strong association between monasteries and arable
farming (Stout 1997, 129-30). Archaeological evidence for this association is provided by the presence of
mills at monasteries such as Nendrum, Co. Down (McErlean and Crothers 2007); High Island, Co. Galway
(Rynne 2000, 15-17); and Inismurray, Co. Sligo (O’Sullivan and Ó Carragáin 2008, 246-51), although, of
these, only Nendrum has been dated. It has been noted that the early laws indicate that a miller is one of
the ‘functional grades’ of the church and that mills ‘should be seen as a characteristic component of an
early Irish monastery’ (McErlean and Crothers 2007, 433). The archaeological evidence for increased
diversification, however, is not supported by the palynological data.

Modern studies ‘demonstrate that, when a few metres from the edge of a cereal field, the value of cereal
pollen falls sharply from levels as high value of 20% to about 1%, and is still detectible even at many
hundred metres distance’ (Hall 2000, 348). Thus pollen evidence from blanket bog cores, which would be
expected to be a considerable distance from arable fields, can only record the extremes of cereal
production and is incapable of recording more subtle, yet significant, changes and differences in farming
economy. As such, Hall (2005) deliberately sampled areas near monastic settlements to see if the
foundation of these sites affected farming intensity, especially in crop cultivation. She found no evidence
for this – indeed the evidence indicates that monasteries were generally founded in places where arable
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farming was already established. It was also noted that ‘a comparison of evidence from the monastic and
secular sites does not indicate change unique to monastic landscapes’ (ibid. 11). The suggestion that
ecclesiastical sites would have had a higher emphasis on arable farming is not presently supported by the
pollen evidence.

Reviews of the pollen evidence for early medieval Ireland express a general consensus that, after a
period of agricultural decline, forest clearance and agricultural expansion can be seen during the third
and fourth centuries A.D. (Cole and Mitchell 2003; Hall 2000; Hall 2005; Plunkett 2007). This clearly
predates the traditional arrival of Christianity in the fifth century. Occasionally wholesale forest clearance
does not occur until much later. There was significant woodland clearance in Co. Antrim in the ninth
century (Hall et al. 1993) and Parkes and Mitchell (2000) suggest similar clearance in Co. Offaly c. A.D.
800, however the Offaly profiles were not independently dated. Subsequent work in the same area cast
doubts on the interpretation of a ninth century decline, but indicated a decline in tree pollen in the mid-
thirteenth century (Hall 2003).

Apart from the areas of highlands and extensive bog cover, the pollen evidence for early medieval Ireland
indicates a landscape of scrubby woodland and mixed farming, almost invariably dominated by
pastureland. Large areas of extensive forest were rare. Ryan (2000, 33) draws attention to a ninth-
century text that refers to only three forest wildernesses in Ireland – the woods of Cooley; Deicsiu in
Tuirtre; and the Wood of Moithre in Connacht. Arable farming is present to some extent in nearly all
areas, and although there is considerable local variation, significant regional or chronological trends in
farming are difficult to identify.

Fields and the Organisation of the Farming Landscape

The term ‘field’ is problematic indicating different things at different times. Fowler (2002, 127) notes that
the term is derived from the Old English feld which, prior to the tenth century, meant ‘open country’, to
distinguish it from, for instance, woodland. The meaning of feld as cultivable land, however, only
emerged at the end of the first millennium A.D. At this time ‘field’ did not imply enclosure but was instead
applicable to an area of land. This distinction survives into the present day in certain regions, with a
continuing differentiation between ‘infield’, i.e. the land around the farmstead which benefits largely from
manuring and ploughing, and ‘outfield’, i.e. the, largely pastoral, remainder. It has been argued that the
way in which these ‘fields’ were organised may imply the nature of the farming conducted and the
overarching social structure. Meitzen (1895) categorised early field systems into two broad types – ‘Celtic’
and ‘Germanic’. In the ‘Celtic’ system the land was owned by an individual farming homestead and was
characterised by small enclosed fields (Patterson 1994, 104); while in the ‘Germanic’ system the land is
owned communally by a nucleated village settlement and is characterised by a mixture of private
enclosure and land divided broadly in infield and outfield which was farmed communally.

Archaeologically it is easier to create typologies of field types than to understand how they were used.
Fowler (2002, 133), in the contest of prehistoric and early-historic British fields, concludes that ‘there is
not much correlation between field-shape in time, process and product’. There is, however, still a
tendency to divide fields into arable or livestock, which ignores the fact that use may have changed over
ensuring years. While all arable land can make perfectly good grazing the reverse is not necessarily true,
for example cultivated land was periodically left fallow and used as pasture, and the stubble-field
produced after a crop is harvested makes good autumn grazing.

Individual ‘fields’ are recognised in the legal tracts of early medieval Ireland. The Críth Gablach (Law of
Status) mentions the airlise, a rather restricted area of land that extended ‘the length of a spear cast on
every side’ from the rath/farmstead (Kelly 1997, 368). Kelly (ibid. 369) speculates that ‘the airlise of a
typical farm contained various enclosures for grazing and cultivation including a garden’. Whereas the
Críth Gablach is concerned with the trappings of status, the Bretha Comaithchesa (Law of Co-Tenancy) is
more concerned with identifying individual property and resolving damages for trespass caused by a
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neighbour or his/her livestock. This law tract therefore clearly defines what constitutes a legal boundary
(discussed below), and also distinguishes between various grades of farmland. The Bretha Comaithchesa
mentions farmlands called the ‘faithche’ and the ‘gort faithche’. Faithche is generally translated as ‘green’
or ‘infield’ and seems to refer to an area in the vicinity of the rath, whereas ‘gort faithche’ suggests a
tilled field, perhaps a subdivision of the more general infield (Kelly 1997, 370). These fields are rather
vaguely stated to have extended ‘as far as the sound of a bell or the crowing of a cock reaches’ (ibid.),
presumably larger than the spear-cast that marked the airlise. Beyond this were lands described as
‘sechtar faitchi” (‘beyond the faitche’) which Kelly concludes is the outfield. The texts, however, do not
specify whether or not these various areas were enclosed. Fowler (2002, 131) concludes that the concept
of a field essentially means, rather vaguely, ‘an area of land to create a terrestrial space where agrarian
functions can be pursued in reasonably controlled environmental circumstances’, a definition that does
not utilise the word ‘enclosure’.

Enclosure can be desirable for two reasons. Firstly, where land was owned privately as was the case in
early medieval Ireland, enclosure was necessary to demarcate ownership. Otherwise there will be chaos
both in current management and the legal obligations of passing ownership from one generation to
another. Secondly, while enclosure is not necessary for cultivation, it is necessary when livestock rearing
and cultivation occur in tin close proximity. Livestock must be separated from cultivated lands and lands
set aside for growing animal fodder. This could imply the use of formal grazing and cultivation enclosed
fields. Alternatively, herds of domesticates could be supervised by shepherds during the day and kept in
paddocks/corrals/animal enclosures or houses at night.

Private Landholding

As noted above the early texts provide detailed descriptions of various types of field boundaries of the
period (O’Corrain 1986, 247-51; Kelly 1997, 372-78). There are four types; a ditch and bank (clas), a
stone fence (cora), an oak fence (dairimbe), a ‘bare fence’, a post and wattle fence (nochtaile or felmad).
The cora was to be three feet wide and four feet high. It was stated to be a ‘wall of three stones’ which
Kelly (1997, 373-74) interprets as being of three coursed high. The tool used for its construction was a
soc which Kelly (1997, 374) interprets this as a stone lever. O’Corrain (1986, 247) interprets this as being
a plough share. He explains this interpretation by stating that a plough would have been used to create
the line of the fence and by removing the sod providing a firmer foundation for the wall. McAfee (1997,
105) states that the topsoil should be removed in order to set the foundation course of a drystone wall
but it is a likely that the use of a share refers to unearthing of the stones used in the wall construction
during ploughing. The trench and bank boundary (clas) was to be made with a spade, the bank to be
three feet high and the ditch three feet deep. It is almost impossible to identify these field monuments on
a purely typological basis, since stone walls and earthen banks have been used throughout the history of
farming in Ireland. The early medieval boundaries also share similar dimensions to post-medieval ones,
for example the fences in Co. Leitrim at the turn of the nineteenth century were composed mainly of ‘a
drain from 4-6 feet wide and [a bank] of 3 or 4 feet’ (McParlan 1802, 48).

The ‘bare fence’ was stated to be primarily for managing livestock a law tract stating that ‘a small pig
should not be able to penetrate because of it closeness, and an ox should not be able to penetrate
because of its firmness and height’ (Kelly 1997, 374-5). There is much detail of its construction. The
vertical posts set eight inches apart, and the horizontal wattles arranged in three bands. The posts should
be four feet high and project one foot above the upper band of wattle. This, in turn, was to be crowned
with a crest of blackthorn (cír draigin). Three strikes of a mallet were to secure the vertical posts into the
ground. The tool specified for its construction was the bill-hook. It may well be that this was a temporary,
and perhaps movable, type of fence used primarily for controlling grazing by livestock. O’Corrain (1986,
250) supports such an interpretation. His reading of the text leads him to conclude that the stone and
ditch and bank fences are regards as permanent but that the post and wattle fence was temporary,
possible seasonal. The texts make a distinction between the types of land on which the fences are built
although heir meaning is unclear. The stone and bank and ditch fences are built in the nochtmachaire
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which literally means ‘bare plane’ while the post and wattle fence was to be built on the lethmachaire
which means ‘half plain’. O’Corrain (1986, 248-9) interprets the former as arable land and the latter as
‘pastureland occasionally tilled’.

The final fence was that of oak which was to be used in woodland. Its method of construction is unclear
as descriptions are confusing. Kelly (1997, 376) notes that it seemed to be of similar dimensions as the
‘bare fence’ but with oak posts. The fact that the axe was the specified tool of construction may imply the
use of split oak planks. O’Corrain (1986, 250) suggest that the fence was made by felling a line of trees
in woodland and using the surviving trunks as vertical posts for the fence. Again it had to be livestock
proof as ‘it had to be made so the oxen may not go through it because of its height nor the little animals
[piglets?] because of its density’ (ibid.). The purpose of this type of fence is unclear. The fact that it was
meant to exclude grazing livestock might suggest that it was meant to protect the young shoots in areas
of coppicing.

The fences of the Bretha Comaithchesa are mentioned in association with various ‘fields’ – nethemain
(‘cornland’); díguin (‘enclosed meadow’); athlumpaire (‘pasture field’); and ethamain (‘grass field’) – and
differences are noted between winter (geimreta) and summer (samrata) grazing. There is also a
distinction between díguin and ethamain, since they are both referred to separately in a section on
trespass on winter grass, suggesting that the grass fields may not necessarily be enclosed (Richey 1879,
80-81). Most informative, however, are the sections on the fines for different forms of trespass onto
another’s property. Thus trespass on a field of winter grass draws the fine of two cows, if the field has a
‘full fence’ (lán íme); a cow and a heifer if the field has a ‘half-fence’ (leth íme); and a cow if there is no
fence. The trespass on summer grazing has the same qualifications, but lower penalties – a cow; ¾ of a
cow; and a heifer respectively (ibid. 82-83). The fact that fines may still be awarded for trespass onto
‘fields’ which were not fenced in quite clearly indicates that enclosure was not necessary in the enforcing
of private property rights during the early medieval period.

Enclosure as an Indicator of Arable Land

The early texts make it clear that ploughing was the normal way in which fields were prepared for the
sowing of cereals (Kelly 1997, 468). The law tracts also imply that the regular plough team comprised
four oxen. The Críth Gablach states that the ócaire owned one ox, i.e. quarter of a plough team (Macneill
1923, 287), thus four farmers would each contribute four oxen to the ploughing. Kelly (1997, 371)
suggests that this implies co-ownership of a large open-field cultivation area with each farmer having
separate strips, but also stresses (1988, 102) that this is indicative of co-operate farming and not
collective farming, i.e. the produce was not pooled among the farmers involved. The crops were grown
on large raised beds or ridges (immaire) separated by a drainage trench. One source describes these
ridges as being eight feet in width although this is in an untypical context where the crops are being
actually grown within a rath. Another text, however, suggests that the immaire width was equal to seven
sods of the plough (Kelly 1997, 72). This would roughly equate with seven feet.

Ploughing can be undertaken most efficiently in an open landscape that avoids the creation of un-
cultivatable headlands necessary for turning an ox team. The meagre documentary sources refer to
cultivated fields having two (ardchinne) headlands and two sides, the former being short and the latter
being long although the exact dimensions are not stated (Kelly 1997, 372). The fact that there were only
two headlands implies that cross-ploughing was not practiced. As there is little evidence for the use of a
mould board at this time (see below) it is likely, as Kelly (1997, 469) suggests, that ‘much supplementary
work had to be done with spades or mattocks before the seedbed was ready for sowing’. The optimal
shape for a field where cross-ploughing was employed is square, whereas without cross-ploughing a long
rectangular field is more desirable. In both instances the field should have parallel sides, otherwise
uncultivated side areas, along with the headlands will occur. The presence of headlands for turning the
plough team would imply an enclosed field, and these lynchets may survive as archaeological features.
One needs to avoid the conclusion that cultivation necessitated field enclosures. An early seventeenth-
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