Dig into the Story of this incredible legacy project in Amplify Archaeology Podcast Episode 34 with Dr Michael Potterton

Dig into the Story of this incredible legacy project in Amplify Archaeology Podcast Episode 34 with Dr Michael Potterton

In this episode of the Amplify Archaeology Podcast, Neil had the opportunity to chat with Dr Michael Potterton of Maynooth University. Michael’s core field of research is the history and archaeology of medieval Ireland, with special reference to landscape and settlement. From 1996 to 1998 Michael was the Assistant Director on the excavations at Moynagh Lough.

Moynagh Lough is one of those sites that looms large in the mind of many in Irish archaeology. The first indications that it was a place of significance came in the late-19th century, when a local farmer, inspired by William Wood-Martin’s seminal writings on Lake Dwellings of Ireland, recognised some similar features in a small peninsula known locally as ‘The Island’, that was set in a little lake where he liked to fish. He recovered items like a grinding stone, a flint knife, a piece of a jet bracelet, and an ogham-inscribed piece of antler. He sent them to Wood-Martin, who identified the site as a crannóg. He was given a grant from the Royal Irish Academy to investigate the monument. However the project was short-lived and Moynagh Lough was forgotten again for nearly a century.

In the 1970s, it reemerged into the light, when a farmer who was seeking to level the small bumpy area at the edge of his field. As he spread the disturbed soil across the field, a large quantity of bone, quern stones and other clearly archaeological objects appeared. The local archaeologist, the late George Eogan, was called in and immediately identified it as a highly significant monument. As Professor Eogan was already excavating the great tomb at Knowth at the time, and as he believed the site to have been largely destroyed already, he had his assistant, a young archaeologist by the name of John Bradley, to lead what was expected to be a short rescue and recovery project. Much more of the crannóg had survived than was originally thought. Between 1980 and 1998, fourteen seasons of excavation confirmed that this was an exceptional multi-period site with rich artefactual assemblages from multiple levels and phases.

Over the years, John produced a number of reports and published several articles about the findings at Moynagh Lough, but the main excavation report remains incomplete and unpublished. When John moved to Maynooth University from UCD in 1996 the Moynagh archive moved with him. After John Bradley’s sudden passing in 2014, a collaborative project led by Michael was formed to review the archive and to take Moynagh Lough through to publication. This was especially fitting, as Michael was a volunteer, then a supervisor and finally Assistant Director of the excavations in the 1990s.

In this discussion Michael tells us of the incredible multi-phase archaeology of Moynagh Lough from the Late Mesolithic to the early medieval period, and how this collaborative project seeks to bring the equally multi-phase project to completion. It is an in-depth chat, that highlights the amazing legacy of John Bradley, George Eogan and Heather King, who all played such an important role at Moynagh Lough. It also reinforces the importance of reappraising past excavations and the wealth of information that are contained within archives, and how multi-disciplinary, collaborative efforts can bring new techniques to shed light on past projects. And more than anything else, the discussion asks the critical question:

What does it all mean?

View of site tour in progress, from north-east (photograph by Heather King, 1982)

Photograph of John Bradley at his desk in Maynooth University (photograph by Thaddeus Breen, 2001)

Finbar McCormick and Jamie Crone making a scale drawing of archaeological features (photograph by John Bradley, 1982)

Selection of bone comb fragments from Moynagh Lough (photographs by Billy Sines, 2022)

Decorated bone spindle whorl from Moynagh Lough (photograph by Albert Glaholm, 1995)

AMPLIFY ARCHAEOLOGY PODCAST

AMPLIFY ARCHAEOLOGY PODCAST

Title: Moynagh Lough

Duration: 1 hour 15 mins.

Summary:

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