Douglas V. Campana

A Geophysical Survey at Dún Ailinne, County Kildare, Ireland

Abstract Dun Ailinne, in County Kildare was an important center of ceremonial and ritual activity in the Irish Iron Age (600 B.C.–A.D. 400). The site is located on a hill and is surrounded by an earthen bank and ditch. Excavation of the summit 35 years ago revealed a series of timber structures that were arguably the focus of the sites Iron Age use. This early research examined only ca. 10% of the sites interior; so from 2006 to 2008 a new program of research employed a targeted topographic survey and a magnetometer survey to determine if there was evidence of additional features inside the bank and ditch, or whether the rest of the site beyond the summit was empty. The results show that the area outside of the excavated summit was characterized by many and varied features of archaeological interest, including additional enclosures and likely structures of the Iron Age and both earlier and later periods. These data allow us to better understand the use of Dún Ailinne during its Iron Age florescence and provide us with directions for future archaeological research.

Making Stereo-Photomacrographs for Archaeological Studies

Abstract Stereoscopic photographs at moderate magnifications can be very useful to the archaeologist as a recording medium and a means for facilitating the comparison of artifacts which can not readily be observed simultaneously. It has proved particularly useful in wear-pattern studies and studies of the manufacture of flint and bone artifacts. A simple apparatus and technique for the making of such photographs is described.

Performance, place and power at Dún Ailinne, a ceremonial site of the Irish Iron Age

Abstract Dún Ailinne is one of the major ceremonial sites of the Irish Iron Age (600 bce–ce 400), a time when society was becoming increasingly centralized. We argue that these sites were a focus for the process of centralization, facilitated by performance though the site’s construction and use. Physical movement in the context of ritual has been shown to affect the perception of social relationships. These would have been experienced through performance, including movement through the landscape, the visual dominance of the hill and the site located on it, the hierarchical arrangement of spaces within the bank and ditch, and the resulting ways in which movement and access are gradually more constrained through time. Experienced through the medium of ritual performance, these various aspects would have reinforced ideas of power and elite status, providing a context in which such constraints could have been created, justified, maintained and perhaps resisted.

Chapter 24 – Traces of Butchery and Bone Working

Publisher Summary This chapter illustrates a number of different techniques of bone modification that appear on both human and non-human skeletons. It describes methods like sawing, chopping, and the use of bone as a raw material for bone tool and artifact manufacture. It illustrates and describes prehistoric, early historic, and modern methods of butchery, including examples from Shanidar Cave in Iraq, the Middle Saxon site of Brandon in the UK, and the eighteenth-century site of Fort Johns in New Jersey, USA. It also depicts human bones that have been dismembered with a power saw.

Traces of Butchery and Bone Working

Animal bones often reveal marks of butchery associated with meat or marrow processing. Butchered bones may be recovered as important behavioral evidence from archaeological sites, or they may be collected within the forensic context and mistaken for human bones with marks of trauma. Archaeologists can use these butchery marks to study the ways in which past human populations butchered, distributed, and consumed meat. In a forensic context, tool marks on bone may be a good indication that the remains are nonhuman in origin, but this is not always the case. The intentional dismemberment of a human body by another individual (usually with the goal of hindering identification or facilitating transportation of the remains) may mimic the appearance of a butchered cow or pig to the untrained observer. An experienced osteologist should always be consulted if there is any doubt. Figure 18–01 shows several commercially butchered cow bones that were mistaken for human remains and turned over to law enforcement. Figures 18–02 and 18–03 are views of a human femur and humerus from an individual who was murdered and subsequently dismembered with a power saw.