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5 The Social Lives of Severed Heads Skull Collection and Display in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland Barra O’Donnabhain Archaeological and historical data suggest that the collection and display of skulls and other body parts were among the many strategies used in the negotiation of power and difference between competing groups in medieval and early modern Ireland. This chapter explores the roles played by decapitation and dismemberment across a number of cultural and temporal contexts in Ireland in which the bodies of individuals, of both group insiders and outsiders , who were perceived as a threat to established political and social power were demolished physically and symbolically. Evidence for these practices is found in archaeologically retrieved human skeletal remains as well as in contemporary literary and artistic depictions. The contextual analysis of cranial and postcranial remains suggests that the collection and display of heads and other body parts underwent various transformations over time that reflect changing political and social circumstances but also perhaps changing understandings of the body and the soul (see also chapters in this volume by Forgey; Stojanowski and Duncan; Valentin and Rolland). Early Medieval Period (AD 450–1170) The population of Ireland has been culturally and biologically diverse throughout most of the historic period, that is, post–fifth century AD. The arrival of Viking groups beginning at the end of the eighth century, followed by moresustained immigration from Britain beginning in the twelfth century, resulted in the presence of a plurality of ethnic and cultural identities that resulted in interactions that were often antagonistic but were also characterized by processes of hybridity and syncretism (Graham 1997). Skull Collection and Display in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland 123 Archaeological evidence for skull collection and display in Ireland is relatively sparse in the Early Medieval period prior to the arrival of the Vikings at the end of the eighth century AD. Many excavations have occurred at the enclosed rural farmsteads that form the typical settlements of the Irish AD 500–1000, but human remains have not been a common find at these sites. In contrast, a number of contemporary elite-level sites, whose architecture tends to be of a more strategic nature, have produced skeletal remains with evidence of trauma. The human remains from the seventh-century levels of the high-status lake dwelling at Lagore, County Meath (figure 5.1), included fourteen skulls with evidence of decapitation (Hencken 1950; O’Sullivan 1998: 116). Most of the human remains were found scattered about the edge of the site, which may have been surrounded by a palisade, where the remains could possibly have been displayed. The presence of two iron collars with chains and a possible leg iron has been interpreted as a means of restraining prisoners or slaves, but these could have also functioned in the display of living individuals . Human skulls were also found at two other high-status lake dwellings, at Ballinderry 1 (Hencken 1936) and Ballinderry 2 (Hencken 1942). Of the three skulls from the second of these sites, two had cut marks. At the stone fortress at Cahercommaun, County Clare (figure 5.1), human remains were concentrated just inside the innermost of three concentric ramparts (Hencken 1938). When these elite sites were excavated in the 1930s, the excavator made passing references to the possible use of the skulls for display. However, little attention has been paid to this suggestion since then. More-secure evidence for early medieval skull collection and display was found at the Viking enclave at Dublin, which was established by Scandinavian groups in the early tenth century. Extensive excavations of tenth- to twelfthcentury levels of the settlement were carried out at a number of sites at Wood Quay, Dublin, in the 1970s and early 1980s (figure 5.2). Though the cemeteries used at that time were not identified, human remains were a relatively common occurrence in the settlement and these could be divided on stratigraphic grounds into two temporal groups. The earlier of these dated to the tenth/ eleventh centuries and was dominated by seventeen isolated skulls. These were found adjacent to a series of earth and gravel banks that were built around the settlement. Of the seventeen skulls, fifteen belonged to adult males, and six of these have evidence of injury that includes both blade wounds and blunt-force trauma. There is evidence of decapitation in four of these skulls, and one of the four has damage to the base and top of the head that is consistent with a pointed...

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