Viking 'Town' Is Ireland's Equivalent Of Pompeii

IT’S likely to be some weeks yet before Minister for the Environment Martin Cullen announces recommendations for dealing with and possibly preserving what historians are now describing as Ireland’s first town.

The discovery of the Viking settlement, at Woodstown, five miles from the city, which is believed to date back to the mid-9th century, was made as preparatory work got underway on the city’s €300m by-pass.

The site, located close to the River Suir, is 1.5 km long by 0.5 km wide and so far up to 3,000 artifacts have been found over a distance of 150 yards. From photographs, which have been examined by the country’s leading archaeologists, early indications suggest that the complete original town of Waterford founded by the Vikings remains virtually intact with dozens of streets and dwellings just under the soil surface.

It is thought that up to 4,000 people may have lived there. To date, nails, weights, jewellery, silverware, weapons and some ceramics have been found along with some ship fragments.

From evidence found at the site, a fleet of 120 Viking ships occupied the Woodstown site about 812. This, in turn, gave them control of Waterford Harbour and of the three-river system, the Suir, the Barrow and the Norse, allowing them ready access upriver to the rich lands and monasteries of these river valleys.

The settlement began as a longphort and that is what archaeologists originally thought the find was until further examination. This is a Dshaped fortification made by the Vikings to protect themselves and their ships from attack. It was the typical fortress from which the Vikings raided the countryside.

The Suir Valley Railway runs along the edge of Woodstown between the site and the Suir. The builders of the railway demolished a mound in a field called Seandún ‘old fortress.’ The mound was found to contain a large number of bones. All indications now suggest that this may have been a Viking ship burial, the only one found in Ireland.

John Maas, an academic PhD researcher, said that it was sheer luck that the aerial photographs showed from the plant colouring that a larger site lay beneath the surface.

“This is Ireland’s equivalent of Pompeii. The find, if it proves to be what we think it is, is the most significant piece of Viking history in Europe. This will be worth up to €200 million annually to the local economy if properly dealt with by the authorities,” explained Mr Maas.

Archaeoastronomy Links Stone-Age Tomb Builders With Sun
Dublin - Apr 22, 2003
Using techniques from the science of archaeoastronomy, this research has already identified significant astronomical orientations in the larger focal tombs and significant patterns in the relative orientations of the monuments... Loughcrew is a nationally important archaeological landscape located 70 km north-west of Dublin in County Meath. It is the site of one of the four major passage tomb cemeteries in Ireland and dates from the Middle Neolithic (3600-3100 BC) and later... Previous investigations by archeologists indicate that these monuments were landmarks on the Neolithic landscape, and the larger focal tombs and their smaller surrounding satellite tombs would have had a major impact on prehistoric communities and their ritual and ceremonial practices. Frank Prendergast's investigations show that two of the largest focal tombs are oriented towards the rising Sun at the equinoxes... It is well known that many such tombs found elsewhere in Ireland and beyond, such as at Newgrange, are oriented towards the direction of the rising Sun on the solstices... [A]t Loughcrew, there is a pattern of orientation between many of the smaller satellite tombs -- both towards each other and towards the two focal tombs.
Prehistoric ruins find near city
by Róisín Burke
The ruins are located at Coolough, about one kilometre from the Galway Clinic and close to many of the city’s business parks and industrial estates, where archaeological digs are being carried out on behalf of the National Roads Authority, prior to the N6 dual carriageway being built. Other objects of interest to emerge in recent digs along new road sites in Co Galway include a 16th century adult male skeleton, remains of medieval cultivation and a Bronze Age campsite and cooking place. “Near Mackney in Ballinasloe, trowel-trenching yielded some pieces of timber buildings and coarse pottery from a farm settlement 3,500 years old,” Mr O’Sullivan related.
Ballynashllog Jackpot
Archaeology
October 5, 2000
An important new Neolithic village, the site Ballynashllog, has been discovered in Thornhill, Derry, in Northern Ireland. Found by archaeologists on a location being developed for construction of Thornhill College, the site has been declared as one "of international significance." According to Department of the Environment archaeologist Paul Logue, "We've hit the jackpot, it's a dream discovery, one that you come across once in a lifetime." The village is 100 meters across thus far in an ongoing excavation, with pottery evidence dating it to 4000-3000 B.C. Logue guesses that the village, located on a ridge above a lake, sheltered anywhere from 15 to 50 people.
4,000-year-old grave uncovered
August 17, 1999
Archaeologists exploring a site in Northern Ireland have uncovered a 4,000-year-old grave as well as ancient artefacts. The grave was discovered during an excavation in the ruins of Newtownstewart Castle in County Tyrone by the government sponsored archaeological team... The remains of two people were found in the grave - described by archaeologists as a "cist". Cist graves are described as small square pits which are lined with stone slabs and covered by a capstone... Also found in the grave were two bronze pots and the archaeological team believe more graves could be found nearby.
The sound of the Neolithic
April 1, 1998
New research suggests that the ancient stone circles and burial mounds of north west Europe may have been designed to act as giant loudspeakers to amplify drums being played during rituals... [I]t is the Neolithic burial mounds that have the strangest properties. They usually consist of a long chamber which is reached by crawling through a small tunnel. 'I was amazed by these caverns,' said University of Reading physicist Dr David Keating. 'The caverns vary in size but their resonant frequencies are very similar. They would amplify a fast drumbeat producing enhanced sounds and echoes during rituals, he added.
Ancient tomb captured both Sun and Moon
Dr David Whitehouse
April 8, 1999
An ancient Irish tomb may have been built with a light chamber aligned not only to the Sun, but to the Moon as well. Building it would have required many years of observations of the motions of the Moon by the tomb's architects. The tomb could also explain the Moon-inspired names of local landmarks.. The latest, and most remarkable yet, was revealed by Martin Byrne, a researcher and artist in County Sligo, Ireland. His work on the Neolithic tombs at Carrowkeel suggests they were positioned so that the light from the Moon could peep into the inner chamber at midwinter. Carrowkeel is in the Bricklieve mountains. Given the number of Neolithic tombs in the area this was one of the most sacred regions of ancient Ireland. Over a dozen mountain-top cairns can be seen looking across the misty hills of Sligo... Indeed, capturing the Moon may have been the main purpose of the tomb - it is pointing at a hill called Knocknarea, which means "Hill of the Moon".

Thanks for that link, Irishguy; it is bookmarked & saved.
& thanks S-C for the concise info & Limerick limerick.

I think my own leg fell off when I pulled; my wife is mostly Irish descent.

This article claimed this Viking settlement was "Ireland's first town" and that the Vikings raided upriver monasteries, giving the (utterly false) impression that the Irish, Celts, and Gaels were all nothing more than wandering tribes or clans, with the exception of the monasteries.

What I was really asking was, what was the author &/or archaeologist trying to convey by calling it 'Ireland's first town'. Naturally, that ignores a few thousand years of history prior to 800 AD.

Is it the first 'fully intact' (his words, not mine) town excavated?

First of that time period?

First Viking town?

First one he's found? ;)

It just seemed so ludicrous that I'm still wondering what he meant. If I get mad enough, I may just have to book passage for us, so I can go over and ask him!

[P.S. added at the top where it will do the most good. Uh-oh. Looks like this post is going to go on a while, and not be concise at all. ;')]

The Vikings were the direct result of the Medieval Warming, and were going great guns for quite a while. Generally their decline is dated to Stamford Bridge, where Harald Haardrada (sp varies) got croaked by Harold II of England just weeks before William the Bastard invaded.

During the House of Normandy (I think that was the name, I used to know this stuff; four kings I believe, W, W2, Henry I, Stephen; the Normans of course being of Scandinavian descent), the Kings of England started carving chunks out of Ireland's eastern coast, I believe it was called "The Pale".

Sometime prior to the first English presence, the former Caig Caigi (five fifths I think it was; the five kingdoms, Leinster, Munster, Connacht, Ulster, and Meath) had become four kingdoms, when Meath was dismembered. I dunno for sure, but it's possible that internecine warfare and who knows what else weakened Ireland.

The same thing happened to Celtic areas in Britain; constant struggle between the Welsh and their lifelong blood enemies, the Welsh, led to continuous English rule from the time of Henry VII to the present day. Scotland was purchased piecemeal (bribery). And sometime since the '45 (1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie) someone wrote a tune "Parcel of Rogues" (recorded by, hmm, Steeleye Span I think, and an obscure group called "By Blood and Marriage") referring to the English. ;')

I've got bloodlines from all over the British Isles. (':

Like England, medieval Ireland was probably dotted with villages. Sites of Roman towns still were occupied in England, but most of those didn't resemble the Roman period original, the originals having been pulled apart for other things. I don't know that a single Roman-era bridge survived, and a bridge is a weird thing to pull down IMO.

The town name where my surname ancestors last lived before taking the boat over here 370 years ago can be found in the Domesday Book, but like a lot of those place names, it was a hamlet. :')

"the Normans of course being of Scandinavian descent"

Only partly.

They were French, a blend of the Gallo-Roman Armoricans, who had been there for centuries, and the Norsemen who settled in Eastern Armorica starting about two centuries before the conquest of England.

It would be more accurate to describe the Normans as "Celto-Norse Frenchmen". But for some reason (not very hard to discern), Anglo-Saxons prefer to insist rather heavily on the Scandinavian origins of the Normans. (To wit: it is galling to say that England was conquered by the French. It makes it better to say that England was conquered by the Vikings. One finds a similar prejudice in the 19th Century linguistic efforts made in England. So much of the English Latin is said to come from Latin. That is true, but in the same sense that America has been settled primarily by the Goths. The words didn't come into English from the Romans. They came into English from Old French, the language of the Conquest. Old French, of course, largely came from Latin. Now, one can say, if one wishes, that "half of English comes from Latin". But that's rather indirect and deceptive. A truer statement would be that half of Middle (and Modern) English comes directly from Old French, and that French derives mostly from Latin. Politics and prejudices shape even the way we look at history, if we're not careful.)

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