Gold Gorgets
image Fig. 61.—Gold Gorget found in Ireland, formerly in the possession of the Earl of Charleville. From Vetusta Monumenta, Vol. v, Pl. xxviii.
Plate II.
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Irish Gold Gorgets. p. 62.Among the most striking of the gold ornaments in the National Collection are the five gold gorgets or neck-collars, with the ends decorated with ornamented disks. These are very elaborately decorated, and of great massiveness. Two others mentioned as having been found in Ireland, one of which was formerly in the possession of the Earl of Charleville, were figured in “Vetusta Monumenta.” Vallancey states that another was found in the County Longford. A few disks have also been found which may have been portions of these gorgets. The neck-portion of the gorgets is arranged in three rows of raised ridges, and these are ornamented with rows of small bosses, the depressions of the ridges being occupied with a narrow rope-shaped fillet. In some cases the ridges are left plain. The small disks at the terminals of the collar are remarkable; they measure about 2? or 3 inches in diameter, and are decorated with a centre and side bosses, surrounded with concentric circles. They much resemble in miniature the round shields or bucklers of the late Bronze Age, but they also show some resemblance to the so-called sun-disks which have been found in Ireland, and which will be described later on. Unfortunately the gorgets have in no case been found with any accompanying objects which would assist in dating them, and in fact in only two cases have details as to their finding been preserved, one found at Ardcroney, near Nenagh, County Tipperary, the other at Tony Hill, Croom, County Limerick. Their ornamentation, however, would seem to place them in the Hallstatt period, first Iron Age, which may be dated at about 700-600 b.c. Their form and ornamentation may be compared with that of the splendid gold collar from Cintra, Lisbon, now in the British Museum,[19] and also with the triple bronze collars common in Scandinavia and north Germany, all of which are referred to the Hallstatt period. This period is at present not well represented in Ireland or the British Isles; and it is doubtful whether iron came into general use in Ireland till about the third century b.c.
One point of much interest must be noticed. In one of the gorgets shown in Plate II, where the disk is attached to the gorget, above the line where the end of the plate passes into the boss, three perpendicular and two cross-stitches can be seen. Some of these sewings are made by means of slight square wire, but in others the fastenings are composed of fine woollen thread, round which is twisted spirally a thin, flat strip of gold. These strips are one of the oldest specimens of woollen cordage now in existence in Ireland.
Gold Sun-disks
We have already referred to the flat disks of gold, a number of which have been found in Ireland. There are four in the British Museum, and no less than fifteen in the National Collection at Dublin. In four cases they have been found in pairs—one pair at Ballina, County Mayo, another pair at Tydavnet, County Monaghan, a third at Cloyne, Co. Cork, and the fourth at Castle Martyr, Co. Cork. Some of these disks are ornamented with concentric circles; others have a cruciform ornament which resembles the four-spoked chariot-wheel, and is a well-known sun symbol. When these objects were first discovered, their origin and use were quite unknown; and Mr. Reginald A. Smith, of the British Museum, was the first to point out their resemblance to the gold disk, decorated with spirals, affixed to a bronze sun-chariot, found in Trundholm Moss, Zealand, in 1902. The bronze chariot consisted of a bronze disk mounted on wheels and drawn by a horse, the gold disk being affixed to the bronze one. The ornamentation of the Irish disks is somewhat different, as the spiral does not appear, its place being taken by the concentric circle. The Trundholm sun-chariot is dated by Prof. Sophus Muller at before 1000 b.c. The Trundholm disk is admittedly connected with sun-worship, as is also the cruciform ornament on the Irish disks. The spoked-wheel is a well-known solar symbol; and similar designs have been found on the bases of some Irish food-vessels, and may also be compared with some of the markings at Dowth.[20] The prevalence of sun-worship in the Bronze Age need not be further gone into here; but the gold disks are of great interest, as furnishing another point of contact between Ireland and Scandinavia in the Bronze Age. The finding of Irish gold lunulÆ in Denmark, and the occurrence of Scandinavian amber in Irish finds of the Bronze-Age, have already been mentioned.
Plate III.
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Gold sun-disks. p. 64.Gold Balls
We may also mention the large hollow golden balls of which seven are in the National collection, one in the possession of Mr. H. J. B. Clements, and another in the British Museum. Eleven of these golden balls were found in 1834 at Carrick-on-Shannon.[21] There has been much conjecture as to the use these balls were put to, and it has been suggested that as their large size would render them inconvenient as personal ornaments, they were probably used to decorate a horse. If so they may have been attached to the bridle like the large balls shown on the horses’ bridles in the bronze scabbard from Hallstatt, dated La TÈne I. See DÉchelette, “Manuel d’ArchÉologie,” vol. ii, p. 770. The Golden Peytrell found at Mold, Flintshire, may be instanced to show that gold was sometimes used to decorate horses; and if the gold balls were really used for this purpose, we may well endorse what the author of the “British Museum Bronze-Age Guide” says when he writes: “A discovery of this kind demonstrates in a striking manner the abundance of gold at the end of our Bronze period.”[22]
Clare Find
Another type of neck-ornaments are the thin gold gorgets with funnel-shaped ends, many of which were found in the great Clare find. These gorgets are quite plain, except for a little ornamentation at the extreme ends near the funnel-shaped extremities. There are five of these objects in the National Collection, and all were found together in the celebrated Clare find. This find—the largest collective one of gold objects ever made in Western Europe—was discovered in making a railway-cutting for the Limerick and Ennis Railway in 1854. A gang of labourers were digging near an old hawthorn-bush, a little distance to the south of the railway bridge in Moghaun north, on the west side of the line of the great fort, and opposite the lough, when they undermined a kind of cist. The fall of one of the containing-stones disclosed a mass of gold ornaments—gorgets, bracelets of all sizes with cup-shaped ends, and a few ingots of gold. The find, from a numerical point of view, far surpassed anything ever made, but none of the objects were highly ornamented or of a special type.
The fact of this immense number of gold ornaments being hidden in a cist in this way has given rise to many conjectures; but in the absence of any other explanation, it may be suggested that the objects had been collected together, and hidden purposely, with the idea of returning and regaining possession of them later. The value of the find has been estimated at at least £3,000. Unfortunately, most of the objects were sold to jewellers and melted down, but a large number were exhibited at the ArchÆological Institute by Dr. Todd and Lord Talbot de Malahide in 1854, and casts of these were taken, and a set is now in the National Collection. There are also a small number of the originals in the Royal Irish Academy’s collection (Plate IV). Otherwise such objects of the find as escaped the melting-pot were scattered, and have found their way into different museums and private collections. As has been mentioned, the objects of this find did not show any remarkable types, and for the most part consisted of very thin bracelets and penannular rings with cup-shaped ends. It is probable that, as well as being ornaments, they served as a kind of currency.
Plate IV.
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Portion of the great Clare find. p. 66. Penannular Rings and Ring-Money
image Fig. 62.—Gold fibulÆ, and other objects found together at Coachford, Co. Cork.
image Fig. 63.—Sixteenth-century bronze casting from Benin, showing Europeans holding manillas (after Read and Dalton, Antiquities of the City of Benin).
The large number of penannular rings with cup-shaped ends which have been found from time to time in the island, brings us on to the general question of the so-called Irish fibulÆ. In Ireland penannular rings with cup-shaped ends of copper or bronze are very rare, only about half a dozen being known, while fibulÆ of gold are exceedingly common. The Coachford find, in which amber beads, gold fibulÆ, and a copper or bronze fibula were all found together, shows that the objects were contemporary; and as this find may be placed at the end of the Bronze Age, it shows that these objects were in use at that period (fig. 62). On the other hand, it is likely that their use began earlier and continued for a long period. These objects when made of gold are of two shapes—in the one case the expanded cups are large and flat and the connecting bar is bow-shaped, and is striated. These have been conjectured to have been used as brooches for fastening a garment; and their form was probably influenced by the Scandinavian spectacle-brooches, the bows of the latter having, in some cases, the same decoration. Except for the striations on the connecting link, the Irish so-called mamillary fibulÆ are almost always plain; but Vallancey has figured two examples, one of which is engraved with triangular, and the other with lozenge, ornaments. There is also the well-known example in Trinity College, Dublin, in which the surfaces of the cups are completely covered with concentric circle ornament, the inside rims of the cups being decorated with hatched triangles, and the neckings of what may be called the handle, with chevron and herring-bone pattern, while along the back of the handle is an ornament of lozenges. In the second type these objects assume the shape of a bracelet; and the expanded ends are sometimes cup-shaped and sometimes plain. From the extreme similarity between the shape of these, whether in gold or bronze, to the so-called African manillas, it has been conjectured the Irish examples, like the African, may have been used as a medium of exchange; and on the whole it seems probable that such was the case, the dividing line between what were used for ornaments and what may have been used for exchange not being at all easily defined (figs. 63 and 64).
Plate V.
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Gold FibulÆ. p. 68.
image Fig. 64.—Sixteenth-century bronze casting from Benin, showing natives holding manillas (after Read and Dalton, Antiquities of the City of Benin).
Ring-Money
The question of a medium of exchange leads us to mention the very small gold penannular rings, the largest being about an inch in diameter, frequently found in Ireland, which are known as ‘ring-money.’ There are fifty-six in the National Collection; and a find made near Belfast of a socketed bronze celt in association with some of these objects shows they were in use during the late Bronze Age.[23] Attention has been called to the similarity of these Irish gold rings to the penannular copper rings plated with gold often found in early Japanese burials.[24]
Many attempts have been made to equate the weights of a series of these rings with some known standard; and in his valuable work “The Origin of Currency and Weight Standards,” Professor Ridgeway devotes several pages of his Appendix C to a discussion of the subject, and gives a table of the weights arrived at by grouping the rings in multiples of 18.
While there can be no reasonable doubt that these objects were used as a medium of exchange, we are not inclined, in the absence of literary evidence, to go any further into the question of what standard they may represent. Some of these rings are evidently forgeries of ancient times, as they are composed of bronze rings covered with a thin plate of gold. The rings as a rule are plain; but some are ornamented with small strips of darker metal let into the gold, and two examples are twisted like small torcs.
Plate VI.
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Gold Ring-Money. p. 70.
