Bead find boost for this year's Dun Ailinne students

Dr Susan Johnston and Dun Ailinne.

The finding of a tiny glass bead on Dun Ailinne last week brought a direct link back to the archaeological excavations carried out on the hill in the late 1960s and early 1970s, writes Brian Byrne.

The blue bead struck a chord with Dr Susan Johnston, who is again leading a dig this July on the Irish Royal Site, and she went back through the records of the original excavations, carried out by the late Professor Bernard Wailes. She knows the work well, having collaborated with him to complete the final report on his Kilcullen dig.

“I found that he had discovered two beads exactly like this one,” Susan told the Diary, adding that she believes it goes back to the Iron Age. “It could be early Medieval, but glass jewellery was very popular in the Iron Age.” And blue was particularly so, she noted. “I haven’t read anything to suggest that blue was technologically easier to produce, so I assume it was just the fashion.” Looked at through a jeweller’s loupe, there certainly is a beautiful deep colour through the bead, which could conceivably have been part of a necklace, given the previous pair discovered  —“the same size, same colour.”

Finding that third bead was an early boost for the eight American archaeological students who are on Dun Ailinne this year, on a field training programme organised by the Blackfriary Archaeology Field School based in County Meath.

Beginning back in 2006, Dr Johnston — based in the Department of Anthropology at George Washington University — has continued summer investigations on Dun Ailinne. Since 2016 she has led teams of American archaeology students, who gain practical field experience on the site as well gaining an introduction to archaeology of Europe, and particularly Ireland, which isn’t normally much considered in the US. “Most of the American interest is focused on places in North America, Mexico, or the Near East and Egypt.”

This year’s group is concentrating on tracing the continuity of features found in 2018 and 2019. Working with them is an experience that Susan Johnston enjoys. “I love teaching, and I feel that I’m introducing the students to a kind of archaeology that they are not going to get anywhere else." She feels that the Dun Ailinne experience is really great as a teaching ground where her students learn things like how to decide that there are ditches underneath ditches, how to tell a hidden ditch from the soil that it is in, things that Susan  believes are ‘really fundamental archaeological skills’.

She compares this to excavations of ancient cities in somewhere like Israel. “You’re not looking at ditch stratigraphy there, you’re looking a ruins, at walls. Here you’re looking at archaeology that’s not dealing with buildings in stone, for a lot of stuff there’s nothing surviving on the surface. You’re not uncovering walls, you’re trying to figure out about ditches. So you’re really learning about dirt, which is kind of fundamentally what archaeology is about.”

When Susan hears back from students who have have been here over the last few years, they tell her that they loved the experience. There’s a Facebook group where her colleague Dr Susanne Garrett regularly posts messages updating on the latest activities and the responses are often on the theme ‘Oh, I wish I was there’. “I think a lot of that is the community here. You’re involved in what’s going on, you’re interested in what we're doing, you support us in a way that doesn’t happen in other places.”

Some of those former students have maintained the connections they made in Kilcullen, and a number of them have come back and stayed in Ireland for holidays as a result. “I often think that something happens when you’re up there, and it’s broiling hot and you’re slogging it out. And you feel you did it, you survived the day. You’re literally in the trenches with your friends.” And equally so in a more typical Irish weather, in rather muddy trenches in the pouring rain.

“It’s a gorgeous place. You’re up there and the view is amazing. And after being there for the day, with the toilet tent, limited hot water so ration the tea, not much shelter from the heat or the rain … then we get to go home at the end of the day and have a shower, some tea, so it’s a nice balance.” The team members are staying with host families in the town.

The Dun Ailinne site is on private land and NOT open to the public. The excavations are made possible through the cooperation of the Thompson family. There is a complete explanation of the site at the Dun Ailinne Interpretive Park in Nicholastown.

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