Good evening, Kossacks. I have had a rough years and a half. I have lost my mom, my PhD adviser, my tent-mate from Girl Scout camp (we worked in the camp kitchen together when we were 16), and most recently a member of our Valley Forge field crew. All this is really depressing, so I thought that I would use tonight's diary to post some lovely pictures of Ireland.
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
Please follow me below the colonial cheese doodle.
One of my colleagues, blue jersey dad, and I were in Ireland for the Rathcrogan conference last month. Rathcrogan in County Roscommon is one of the Irish royal sites from the Iron Age. The others are Tara in Meath, Navan Fort in Ulster, and our site, Dún Ailinne in Leinster. In the early medieval sources, Dún Ailinne is described as the seat of the kings of Leinster, while Rathcrogan is associated with the kings of Connaught.
We arrived a day early for the conference, so we had some time to do a bit of sightseeing. Dad and I had never been in the Roscommon area before, so we set out to see a few of the archaeological sites. Here are a few of the pictures.
The first site we visited was Rathra, a high-status dwelling site from the early medieval period. On our visit, we were accompanied by a small herd of curious cattle:
The cows are standing on one of the earthen ramparts that surround the site.
We also visited Boyle Abbey, a large Cistercian monastery that was founded in the 12th century:
The monastery was nationalized by Henry VIII, but the buildings survived because the site was used as a fort after dissolution. Here you can see some of the Romanesque architecture:
We also visited Carrowkeel, a group of five Neolithic passage tombs in the mountains overlooking Lough Arrow. The location is quite desolate. Here you can see one of the tombs. They are composed of a stone-lined passage leading to the tomb and covered with a cairn (a large heap of smaller stones):
Here is the entrance to one of the tombs:
Here is another type of Neolithic tomb known as a portal tomb or dolmen. It is made of several upright stones covered with a capstone.
Finally, here is the site of Rathcrogan itself. The central mound would have held a circle of upright wooden posts:
And here is a picture of our site taken back in 2006: