1,600-year-old wooden pagan idol found in Irish swamp

A 1,600-year-old pagan idol made of a wooden post cut from an oak tree, was unearthed in a swamp in the west Ireland.

Archaeologists say the idol dates from the very late stage of the Pagan Ireland, only about 100 years before the conversion of the Irish to Christianity during the mission of Saint Patrick in the 5th century.

The idol appears to have been split in two, a common practice with sacrificial items, possibly meaning that it was “dead” and could no longer be used, and deliberately deposited in the swamp, perhaps as a replacement for a human sacrifice or a “swamp body”, according to archaeologists.

Excavations show the rural site of Gortnacrannagh, County Roscommon, has been considered a pagan holy place for thousands of years, said Eve Campbell, an archaeologist at Archaeological Management Solutions who led the excavation at the site.

“It was a sacred swamp, a place that would have been special or important for several thousand years, from the late Neolithic to the early medieval period.”Campbell said. “People came to drop things, like our idol, in the wetland, basically a swamp along a river.”

The idol is approximately 2.5 meters high and aims the lower end so he can stay upright on the ground, Campbell said. The upper end has been carved in the shape of a human head, but now he’s mostly rotten. Nine horizontal notches carved along the idol’s body may have depicted his rib cage.

Similar wooden idols have been found throughout northwestern Europe, including the idol Shigir of 12 thousand years, which was found in Russia in 1890.

A dozen such idols have been found in Ireland alone, They often date from the Bronze Age of northern Europe (around 3,500 to around 2,500 years ago), but the recently discovered object appears to be the largest and most recent of them. Radiocarbon dating shows that it was made from the trunk of an oak felled in the 4th century.

“One of the really exciting things about the idol is its late date, because it’s at the end of the Iron Age and Ireland is on the verge of being Christianized.” Campbell said. “So in that sense, it gave us some interesting insight into the types of practices people were engaging in on the eve of Christianization.”

Other artefacts that archaeologists have found at the site include several different sets of human remains, mostly skull fragments, but in one case a complete skull without the jawbone. These bones were probably taken from graves elsewhere and deposited in the swamp.

Archaeologists have also found hundreds of animal bones, suggesting that the site was frequently used for animal sacrifices; a ritual iron dagger; many pieces of pottery; and the remains of a wooden path and platform that once extended into deeper waters, presumably so that people can access it safely from the shore.

The team found the wooden idol almost a year ago, but the find was kept secret as archaeologists carefully dug around it and removed it.

“When we found the object, we knew it was something important”, Campbell said. “But we had to keep it silent until it was finished.”

The wood rots quickly when exposed to air, so the idol now passes through a long process Conservation at University College Dublin.

“The idol was found at the start of the excavation, so we had a year to complete the excavation of the rest. [del sitio]”, noted. “Now we are in a position to make everything public.”

After three years of conservation, the idol will be on display at the National Museum of Ireland. Campbell and his colleagues also made a wooden replica which shows the idol as it would have appeared before his head and body rot.

The replica of the idol will be on display in a museum in the nearby town of Tulsk dedicated to the archaeological sites of Rathcroghan, about 5 kilometers from the swamp where the idol was found. These sites are the remains of what would have been an Irish colony that lasted over 5,000 years ago, in the Neolithic, to about 1,600 years, in the Iron Age.

Campbell said the sacred site of Gortnacrannagh was likely part of the Rathcroghan Complex of Ancient Sites. “They would certainly have been contemporaries to some extent, and trying to understand the connection between the two is something that really interests us very much.”, noted.

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