The Archaeology of the Early Medieval Celtic Churches: No. 29

Nancy Edwards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351546577
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume focuses on new research on the archaeology of the early medieval Celtic churches c AD 400-1100 in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, south-west Britain and Brittany. The 21 papers use a variety of approaches to explore and analyse the archaeological evidence for the origins and development of the Church in these areas. The results of a recent multi-disciplinary research project to identify the archaeology of the early medieval church in different regions of Wales are considered alongside other new research and the discoveries made in excavations in both Wales and beyond. The papers reveal not only aspects of the archaeology of ecclesiastical landscapes with their monasteries, churches and cemeteries, but also special graves, relics, craftworking and the economy enabling both comparisons and contrasts. They likewise engage with ongoing debates concerning interpretation: historiography and the concept of the Celtic Church, conversion to Christianity, Christianization of the landscape and the changing functions and inter-relationships of sites, the development of saints cults, sacred space and pilgrimage landscapes and the origins of the monastic town.

CHAPTER 1
The Archaeology of the Early Medieval Celtic Churches: An Introduction

By EDWARDS NANCY

Approaches

This book is about the archaeology of the early churches in Celtic-speaking areas of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, south-west Britain and Brittany. It focuses on the period c AD 400-1150 but also refers to later periods, where relevant. This book is not about either the ‘Celtic Church’ or ‘Celtic Christianity’. The current popularity of the latter is partly inspired by perceptions of early Christianity and spirituality in the Celtic west and the archaeology of places like Iona (Bradley 1999, 189-235; Meek 2000, 1-121). Indeed, a recent visit to St Ninian’s Cave at Physgill near Whithorn, Galloway, shows the continuing significance of such sites for modern pilgrims who place wooden crosses and inscribed pebbles close to the early medieval crosses carved on the rock outside (Figure 1.1). The ‘Celtic Church’, a term which implies uniformity of belief, practice, organization and culture amongst the early medieval Celtic churches, at least in the period before their acceptance of the Roman method of calculating Easter, was still in common use by respected scholars, such as Nora Chadwick (1961), in the 1960s, and even later. However, from the 1970s the term began to be questioned (Thomas 1971, 5-6; Davies 1974-75; 1992; Hughes 1981) as a result of an increasing understanding of the complexity of the evidence for the early medieval Celtic churches. More recently, there has also been a realization that different generations in the past have manipulated the concept of the ‘Celtic Church’ to suit their own contemporary purposes and debates, both religious and political, as for example, in the 16th and 17th centuries with the rise of Protestantism, and during the Celtic Revival in the second half of the 19th century with the rise of nationalism (Bradley 1999; Meek 2000; see also Guigon, this volume).

The archaeology of the early medieval Celtic churches has its origins in the work of the antiquarian Edward Lhuyd (1659/1660-1709), who was the first to record many examples of early Christian inscribed stones and stone crosses during his extensive travels in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and Brittany (Edwards 2007b). However, an increasing interest is evident from the late 18th century onwards, with the rise of antiquarian societies in Scotland, Ireland and later Wales, as well as in the work of individual scholars. The emphasis was on the above-ground remains, the stone sculpture, churches and associated buildings, which were often ruinous and under threat, and early medieval ecclesiastical books and ornamental metalwork, including reliquaries which were now passing from the hands of the families who had been their hereditary keepers into museum collections (see Glenn, this volume). In Ireland, for example, George Petrie (1790-1866) (Sheehy 1980, 17-23; Murray 2004), recorded large numbers of early churches and stone monuments on his travels for the Ordnance Survey and wrote an important essay about the Christian origins of round towers as belfries (Petrie 1845; Leerssen 1996, 108-134); he also ensured that a considerable number of early Christian antiquities were acquired by the Royal Irish Academy. Later, as a result of the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, early ecclesiastical sites began to be taken into state care. The archaeological remains of one such concentration of sites, on Inishmurray, Co Sligo, were the subject of a fine early survey by W F Wakeman, first published in 1887 (Wakeman 1892), which has remained the only substantial work on the early Christian archaeology of the island until the recent research and excavation by Jerry O’Sullivan and Tomás Ó Carragain (see Ó Carragáin, this volume). In Scotland, Joseph Anderson’s survey Scotland in Early Christian Times (Anderson 1881) may be seen as a landmark publication partly stimulated by the return of St Fillan’s crozier from Canada to Scotland (Stevenson 1981, 158; see Glenn, this volume). It includes a discussion of the ‘Structural remains of the early Celtic Church’ and ‘Existing relics of the early Celtic Church’, as well as of the sculpture, comparing the evidence from Scotland with that of Ireland. Otherwise much of the research was concentrated on the production of corpora of the early Christian stone sculpture, not only for Scotland (Stuart 1856-67; Allen and Anderson 1903), but also for Wales (Westwood 1876-79), Cornwall (Langdon 1896) and the Isle of Man (Kermode 1907).

Figure 1.1 Early medieval crosses incised on the rock face at St Ninian’s Cave, Physgill, near Whithorn, Galloway, with crosses and pebbles left by modern pilgrims. (Photograph: author)

During the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries archaeological excavations of early medieval ecclesiastical and related sites in western Britain and Ireland were comparatively rare. In Scotland, for example, St Ninian’s Cave, Physgill, where an early graffiti cross had been discovered in 1871, was cleared and a considerable amount of early medieval sculpture discovered (Maxwell 1884-85). In Wales there was an early excavation at Clynnog Fawr, Gwynedd. The floor of the capel-y-bedd (‘chapel of the grave’) of St Beuno, formerly the site of his tomb, which had been venerated until its destruction c1790 (Edwards 2002, 235), was dug up to reveal the foundations of an earlier stone building (Figure 15.1). The excavator, Basil Stallybrass, compared the remains with those of early churches in Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall, and tentatively, but wrongly, identified them as ‘the actual foundations of St. Beuno’s original chapel’ (and therefore of 7th-century date) and ‘in accordance with the general practice of the early Celtic Church’ (Stallybrass 1914, 284, 282; see Longley; Pritchard; Petts and Turner, this volume). In Ireland, the fact that many early church sites were ruinous and had not always continued in use for modern burial, offered opportunities for a much more extensive excavation. At Nendrum, Co Down, where a fragmentary church and round tower were still extant, H C Lawlor uncovered three concentric curvilinear enclosures and large areas of the interior, revealing successive phases of domestic and other structures and areas of craftworking, as well as a considerable number of artefacts (Lawlor 1925). It has remained an enormously influential excavation, since this was the first time that archaeology had enabled the layout and development of a major early medieval monastic site to be understood.

In the mid-20th century, the study of early medieval church archaeology, particularly in western Britain, was dominated by C A Ralegh Radford (1900-98), who was responsible for survey and excavation at many early church sites, as well as writing about early medieval stone sculpture. In Wales, for example, he surveyed Ynys Seiriol and Penmon, Anglesey (RCAHMW 1937, 119-123, 141-144; see Gem; Pritchard, this volume) and excavated the cell-y-bedd (‘cell of the grave’) at Pennant Melangell, Montgomeryshire (Radford and Hemp 1959; see Petts and Turner, this volume). In Scotland his excavations were concentrated in the south-west and included both Whithorn and St Ninian’s Cave, as well as Birsay, Orkney, and in the Isle of Man he excavated at St German’s Cathedral, Peel (Radford 1950; 1956; 1959; Radford and Cubbon 2004). His most important excavations were, however, in southwest England at Glastonbury, Somerset (Radford 1978), and Tintagel, Cornwall. Nevertheless, his interpretations were often suspect, most notably at Tintagel, which he wrongly identified as an archetypal ‘Celtic monastery’ (Radford 1962), when it was in fact primarily a high-status secular centre which included a church site on the adjacent mainland (Thomas 1993, 67-81; Turner 2006, 57-59, 91-93). He was also the main advocate of the view that Christianity in Roman Britain had only a minimal impact on the post-Roman west and, using the evidence of the early Christian inscribed stones as well as documentary sources, argued instead for the dominance of influences coming in from Gaul on both conversion to Christianity and the introduction of monasticism (Radford 1967; 1971, 8-10).

Also influential in this period was research on small ecclesiastical sites, particularly in Ireland, which were interpreted as early Christian eremitic monasteries (Henry 1957, 146). Many were located on islands, the most dramatic example of which is Skellig Michael, Co Kerry (de Paor 1955). On Church Island, Co Kerry, M J O’Kelly carried out a total excavation of the church, associated buildings and enclosure, uncovering earlier features which he interpreted as the original wooden church and the shrine of the saint. This site was to prove very influential, not only in Ireland (see Sheehan, this volume), but also across the Irish Sea in the excavations on Ardwall Isle, Dumfries and Galloway, and Burryholms off Gower (Thomas 1967; Hague 1974; see Pritchard, this volume).

Charles Thomas’s (1971) The Early Christian Archaeology of North Britain was of seminal importance because it is in this book that many of the concepts which have since dominated studies of the archaeology of the early church in Celtic Britain and Ireland were first articulated. Though the archaeological evidence predominated, Thomas embraced a multidisciplinary approach to examine the impact of Christianity on northern Britain in the 4th-8th centuries and incorporated comparative material from elsewhere in western Britain and Ireland. He began by demonstrating the continuity of the Romano-British church into the post-Roman period drawing on the evidence of the early inscribed stones. Based on the distribution of imported pottery, he also suggested that monasticism was first introduced into south-west Britain from the Mediterranean in the 5th century, and was subsequently reinforced from Gaul and perhaps Spain in the 6th. The layout of major monasteries and eremitic sites was then considered with the aid of field-survey plans. Thomas then turned his discussion to cemeteries, chapels and the commemoration of the dead. From this emerged the concept of the ‘undeveloped [inhumation] cemetery’, which straddles the period of conversion and may show elements of continuity with a pagan, prehistoric past; it may include a curvilinear enclosure and ‘special’ graves. Some, but not all, of these became ‘developed cemeteries’ through the acquisition of wooden chapels and other buildings which, from the late 7th century onwards, were gradually replaced in stone; many of these sites eventually evolved into parish churches. Thomas also considered the archaeological evidence for altars and the cult of relics, both corporeal and incorporeal, including slab-shrines to house disarticulated remains and their portable equivalents (see Bourke, this volume). He concluded with a discussion of the critical use which archaeologists might make of hagiography and place-names.

Since the late 1960s our knowledge of the archaeology of the early medieval Celtic churches has expanded rapidly as a result of both field survey and excavation. This work has, for the most part, been concentrated in Scotland and Ireland, where sites are less likely to be encumbered by later churches and cemeteries still in active use. In Scotland, the Argyll Inventory (RCAHMS 1971-92), which included a volume devoted to Iona, served to highlight the wealth and variety of the visible field evidence, as did surveys of similar sites and monuments in Ireland exemplified by those for Co Donegal and the Dingle and Iveragh Peninsulas in Co Kerry (Lacy 1983, 240-317; Cuppage 1986, 257-369; O’Sullivan and Sheehan 1996, 238-361).

Although rescue excavations and small interventions have played a significant role, research excavations, sometimes of large areas or complete sites, have predominated. Important excavations on major ecclesiastical sites in Ireland have been comparatively small-scale and may be exemplified by a series of rescue excavations carried out from the late 1960s onwards in Armagh, which have greatly added to our understanding of the topography, layout, chronology and economy of the site (Gaskell Brown and Harper 1984; Lynn 1988; Crothers 1999), and a similar series at Clonmacnoise, Co Offaly (see King, this volume). In Scotland, though there have, for example, been piecemeal excavations at Iona (O’Sullivan 1998; see Yeoman, this volume), undoubtedly the two most important projects have been the large-scale, research-driven excavations at Whithorn, Galloway (Hill 1997) and Portmahomack, Sutherland, both of which (like Iona) have significant concentrations of early medieval sculpture. Those at Whithorn (1984-91), a site comparatively well documented in the sources because of its association with St Ninian, were located in the Glebe Field adjacent to the Priory buildings. The aim of the project was nothing less than to uncover the ‘Cradle of Christianity in Scotland’ (Hill 1997, ix) and the excavations have charted the development of a ‘monastic town’ and its associated cemetery, structures and activities from the 5th century onwards. Those at Portmahomack (1994-2007), which by contrast is a site apparently unmentioned in the documentary record, focused on both St Colman’s Church and the adjacent glebe field, tracing the rise and fall of an important ecclesiastical settlement in the north-east (see Spall, this volume). In the Isle of Man excavations at St German’s Cathedral on St Patrick’s Isle, Peel, which uncovered an adjacent Viking Age cemetery, have also proved significant (Freke 2002).

The increasing number of excavations and other work on smaller ecclesiastical sites in Ireland and Scotland has resulted in a more complex interpretation of the roles of such foundations. In Ireland work has continued apace on island sites identified as monasteries, notably Skellig Michael (Horn et al 1990; Rourke 2002), Illaunloughan, Co Kerry (White Marshall and Walsh 2005) and High Island, Co Galway (White Marshall and Rourke 2000), but their continuing function as places of pilgrimage has also been recognized (see also Inishmurray, Ó Carragáin, this volume). Likewise in Scotland island monasteries on Inchmarnock, off Bute, and the May, in the Forth, have been investigated, both of which were linked with larger foundations nearby (see Yeoman, this volume). In some other instances, however, excavators have been less willing to assign a monastic function to small ecclesiastical sites which are not on islands, notably Reask, Co Kerry (Fanning 1981; see also Caherlehillan, Sheehan, this volume).

By contrast, in Wales and south-west Britain comparatively few excavations, apart from those of ‘undeveloped cemeteries’ (see Longley; Ludlow, this volume), have been initiated, mainly because most church sites of likely early medieval origin are still in use. Notable exceptions include the large cemetery associated with the major early medieval ecclesiastical site at Llandough, Cardiff, which is also located close to a Roman villa, though whether there was any continuity between the two remains unproven (Holbrook and Thomas 2005; Knight 2005). Also of significance was the total excavation of the early medieval cemetery and small 12th-century church with associated curvilinear enclosure at Capel Maelog, Powys, a site which was abandoned at the end of the middle ages (Britnell 1990), and the re-investigation of the cell-y-bedd and associated burials under the walls of the remote church at Pennant Melangell, Powys, where t...