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ADOLF MAHR AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF HARVARD ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH

The collection is not a matter of mere local interest; it is of international importance. It contains the key of many problems in the past history of Europe at large. The Free State holds it in trust for the entire world, and it cannot be adequately controlled except by a scholar of European reputation.1

– R.A.S. Macalister (1928)

The rise of archaeology as a scientific discipline in nineteenth-century Ireland, according to John Hutchinson was ‘strongly driven by a nationalist desire to establish Irish descent from the ancient Celts, and thereby Irish claims to be one of the original civilizations of Europe’.2 In the twentieth century, after independence, this was still the case. Reference was made in a Hooton manuscript to ‘the peculiar importance of Irish archaeology’ and to the idea that ‘the traditions and beliefs of the prehistoric and ancient historic populations have been to a great extent perpetuated in their living descendants’.3 In his privately published memoir Hugh O’Neill Hencken described how he went to the Western Union office near Harvard Square and wrote out a long cablegram to Adolf Mahr at the National Museum of Ireland about the possibilities of Harvard excavating in Ireland. He received an ‘enthusiastic reply but with some reservations’.4 Mahr, an expert in European Celtic archaeology, strongly influenced the selection of archaeological sites for excavation by the Harvard Mission. He was convinced of the importance of Ireland to America and his enthusiasm for the work of the Americans was essential to their success. In his view Ireland’s ‘real world importance’ was its archaeological heritage, with its bearing on the formation of European civilisation. He wrote that ‘Irish archaeology is the only thing which can give us a status in European learning’.5 The shared understanding of Mahr and the American anthropologists and archaeologists was that the identity of the Irish was ‘Celtic’ and this belief underpinned the selection of sites for excavation. The initial Harvard proposal was to scientifically excavate archaeological sites for every prehistoric and proto-historic period, to study the monuments and artefacts discovered, to determine racial affinities of skeletal remains excavated and to collect folklore about ancient remains.6

Transitions: Archaeology and Society

Irish society in the 1930s was, the Harvard academics believed, a society in transition between traditional and modern and, therefore, ideal for study. Irish archaeology itself was going through a transition from traditional antiquarianism to modern archaeology. The gradual professionalisation of archaeology in Ireland resulted in scientific archaeologists taking the place of antiquarians over the course of the 1920s and 1930s. There were still debates and controversies raging in the 1930s in Britain between ‘scientific archaeologists’ and ‘antiquarians’ and the question of who had the right to control interpretation of the past, a debate which had been ongoing there since the nineteenth century.7 Adolf Mahr and the Harvard archaeologists were central to the process of change in Ireland. Amateur archaeologists played a key role in showing the Americans around during their reconnaissance trip in 1931 and in sharing their unique knowledge about local areas. The Harvard archaeologists were seen as objectivists who would rescue Irish archaeology from the narrow parochialism and speculative mire of antiquarianism, and give it a global resonance.

During the 1930s the National Museum of Ireland used antiquarians who were described as having ‘archaeological leanings’ and ‘correspondents’ in various parts of the country as opposed to university- or museum-trained archaeologists. These amateurs or antiquarians were not qualified as archaeologists, but they acquired antiquities for the museum and helped in the discovery of new archaeological monuments and the protection of existing ones. Some of them even undertook excavations at the behest of Mahr. This was simply a pragmatic solution as the number of professionally trained archaeologists in the state was miniscule. Seán P. Ó Ríordáin pointed out, in 1931, ‘the great dearth of trained workers in archaeology in Ireland’, and ‘the lack of opportunities for their training’.8 In the 1930s and 1940s there was the gradual phasing out of the use of unqualified individuals to direct archaeological excavations. The more important sites were left to trained archaeologists and museum staff.

However, the public perception of both archaeologists and antiquarians was often negative in character. When Myles na gCopaleen wrote in his Irish Times column ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’ on 29 May 1942 about ‘Irish Iberian flint-snouted morons (c.6000 B.C.), who practised the queer inverted craft of devising posterity’s antiquities’, he was perhaps reflecting contemporary Irish society’s suspicion of archaeology and the ‘scholarly dirt-shovellers’ who practised it. Considering the fact that the Professor of Archaeology at UCC, Canon Patrick Power had the following to say about the discipline in 1925, this is hardly surprising: ‘For long Irish Archaeology had in fact been left to charlatans and dabblers, whence it acquired a rather dubious reputation which, to a certain extent, perhaps adheres to it still’.9 Eoin MacNeill noted that ‘the study of the prehistoric got a bad name, and deserved it’.10

Mahr was ambivalent in his attitude to antiquarians. He lamented the fact that many megalithic monuments in Ireland had been destroyed and ‘used as quarries’ and had served as ‘a happy hunting ground for members of field clubs and other people whom one can call only glorified stamp-collectors’.11 However, he continued to use those whom he regarded as having ‘archaeological leanings’. Trigger observed that antiquarians, did not employ a coherent methodology and ‘did little deliberate digging and had no sense of chronology’.12 This echoes Piggott’s view of antiquarians which was that they produced literary collections that included genealogical material, heraldic imagery and folk tales, along with occasional descriptions of artefacts.13 The collection’s focus of antiquarian pursuits during the nineteenth century and in the early decades of the twentieth century had also resulted in the damaging of archaeological monuments. This particularly affected the collection of ‘Celtic’ objects, usually associated with the La Tène Period of the Iron Age. Much of this material did not come from stratified contexts and it did not have a provenance.14

Brian Fagan described archaeology in nineteenth-century Ireland as being the preserve of the monied upper class, as ‘a gentleman’s pursuit, and often a country gentleman’s calling’.15 The transfer of power from an Anglo-Irish dilettante amateur elite to Irish Free State professional employees happened during the transition of Irish archaeology from a tool of colonialist endeavour to that of Free State nation-building. This gradual transition was reflected in the main personalities involved, from R.A.S Macalister, who served as Professor of Celtic Archaeology at UCD between the years 1909 to 1943, to S.P. Ó Riordáin who succeeded him, and their widely differing social and religious backgrounds. To many, Macalister was of the old school. Both he, and Harold G. Leask, were dubbed ‘ascendancy archaeologists’ by the archaeologist H.E. Kilbride Jones.16 Leask, the founder of the study of Irish medieval architecture, was the author of Irish Castles and Castellated Houses, published in 1941. There was a general lack of interest in this type of work as castles were seen as vestiges of colonial power and ‘an unwelcome guest at the academic feast in the new Irish state’.17 Indeed, Macalister had described medieval archaeology in 1928 as ‘a sad decline from the achievements of Celtic Ireland’.18 Not surprisingly, castles were not included in the research programme of the Harvard Mission. Before his appointment to UCD, Macalister, a Presbyterian of Scottish descent and son of Dublin-born Cambridge anatomist Alexander Macalister, had been Director of the Palestine Exploration Fund from 1900 to 1909. During this period he excavated at Tell el-Jazari, the biblical city of Gezer. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century he was regarded as the most distinguished archaeologist in Ireland. O’Sullivan describes Macalister, in his position as Professor of Celtic Archaeology at UCD, as ‘the pioneer whose interpretation of the role set an ambitious standard for those who followed’.19

Adolf Mahr: ‘The foremost archaeologist in the country’

After independence, the Irish Free State Government brought in expertise from abroad for leadership in important economic and cultural institutions. When the position of Keeper of Irish Antiquities became vacant in 1926, Macalister suggested himself for the post in a letter to William T. Cosgrave, President of the Executive Council.20 The government, however, awarded the position to the German Prehistorian Professor Walter Bremer of Marburg in 1926.21 Following the premature death of Bremer, the Irish Government advertised the position of Keeper of Irish Antiquities all over Europe in an effort to find a scholar of European reputation. Adolf Mahr, an Austrian archaeologist, applied for the position and his was one of the last of thirteen applications received. He was appointed Keeper of Irish Antiquities on 29 September 1927.

Macalister approved of Mahr’s appointment and in 1928 expressed the view that: ‘The authorities of the Free State Government showed to the world that they fully realised their responsibility in the matter of the appointment of a successor’.22 Hencken regarded Mahr as ‘the foremost archaeologist in the country’.23 Mahr had been trained in the subjects of anthropology and ethnology and specialised in prehistory at the University of Vienna. He became an expert in the Iron Age and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Prehistoric Archaeology in July 1912. His doctoral thesis was on the La Tène Period in Upper Austria, which was later published as Die La Tène – Periode in Oberosterreich.24 He worked at the Museum of Linz in 1912 for approximately two years, reorganised the prehistoric collections and introduced a new Register of Acquisitions in 1919. At that time he also worked on an inventory of artefacts in the Museum of Hallstatt and wrote a book on this collection, Die Prahistorischen Sammlungen des Museums zu Hallstatt, which was published in 1914.25 Mahr was employed at the Natural History and Prehistoric Museum in Vienna from 1912 and held positions as Assistant Curator, Curator and Deputy Director of the Anthropological-Ethnological Department. In 1918, he took part in excavations in Montenegro and Albania and participated in excavations in Holland during the period 1919 to 1920. In 1926 he excavated the Grunerwerk salt mine at Hallstatt in Austria.

On 17 July 1934, de Valera appointed Mahr to the position of Director of the National Museum of Ireland, despite the fact that he was not an Irish citizen.26 He was enabled to do so as the nationality clause included in the regulations governing the filling of technical and professional posts had been omitted since February 1934.27 A permit under the Aliens Order 1935 was received in respect of his employment as Director.28 It appears that no other candidates were considered for this position despite E. Estyn Evans’s claim that there were ‘excellent applicants for the post from Britain’.29 An Englishman of Welsh parentage, Evans held the position of lecturer in geography at Queen’s University, Belfast from 1927. He was of the view that Mahr’s appointment was an illustration of ‘the strength of the hatred of all things British prevailing in Éire in the years following Partition’.30 But it was unlikely that applications were received from Britain as it seems that the post of Director of the National Museum was not advertised. Seósamh Ó Néill, Secretary at the Department of Education, suggested that ‘in the interests of this important National Institution, that an appointment should be made to the Directorship without delay’.31

Adolf Mahr has been described by Irish historians as a possible Nazi spy and was, according to John P. Duggan, ‘handily placed’ in the National Museum.32 Mahr became a member of the Nazi party on 1 April 1933, a year before his appointment as Director of the National Museum. It seems that de Valera was aware of Mahr’s links with Nazism in the 1930s but it is not known if he had this information prior to making the appointment. Frederick Boland, the Assistant Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, described Mahr in 1939 as ‘the most active and fanatical National Socialist in the German colony here’.33 Mahr had communicated his decision to resign as leader of the Nazi party in Ireland to the government in July 1938.34 He was not hiding his allegiance to the Nazi party and had corresponded in friendly and open terms with one of the Harvard team, the prehistorian Hallam L. Movius, about his political views.35 According to Dermot Keogh, Mahr, as Director of the National Museum was in a position ‘to observe as an insider Irish politics and society’.36 But Mahr wasn’t simply an observer. As Director of the most important cultural institution in the Irish Free State his position allowed him to influence the direction of Irish archaeology at a very important time culturally, politically and economically. O’Donoghue’s view was that it was Mahr’s position as a Nazi leader during the 1930s which gave him influence that he would otherwise not have wielded as a ‘humble museum director’37 is incorrect. The ‘humble museum director’ working under a nationalist government was the custodian of the past of a nation struggling to define itself as non-British, Irish and European within a global Celtic context. The Nazi regime did not consider its archaeologists to be ‘humble’. In Germany, the Nazis took over many institutions and generously funded research in prehistoric archaeology. They also controlled archaeological institutions in countries after occupation.38 Mahr was a founder member, along with Seamus Ó Duillearga and others, of the German Society for Celtic Studies, established in Berlin on 25 January 1937.39 The society was described in the Irish Times as ‘non-political and non-sectarian’; its aim was ‘to spread the knowledge of Celtic culture and languages in Germany, and to establish cultural and social relations between the Germanic and Celtic peoples’.40

The arrival of the Harvard Mission to Ireland was a godsend for Mahr, who was suddenly in the position to excavate a myriad of sites for which he previously would simply not have had the financial resources. He could see an opportunity for gaining knowledge about Irish archaeology and training Irish archaeologists in innovative techniques. There was also the possibility of self-aggrandisement as he could claim the credit for this massive cultural project. Mahr’s own eugenic thinking, which was the basis for Nazi ideology, would have made him partial to the anthropological views of Hooton and the Harvard team, explained in more detail in the next chapter.41 Irish archaeologists including Joseph Raftery, S.P. Ó Ríordáin and Michael V. Duignan were all trained at the National Museum under the tutelage of Adolf Mahr.42 They were given opportunities such as travelling studentships abroad and received scientific training on the Harvard and Unemployment Scheme sites. Joseph Raftery was appointed Keeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum in 1949 and later became Director in 1976.

Ó Ríordáin, a Catholic, had worked as a dockyard apprentice and earned a qualification as a teacher. While teaching in Cork he studied archaeology under Canon Patrick Power at UCC and took other courses in Celtic Studies.43 Canon Power, ‘whose competence was in the field of modern Irish, not archaeology’, had lectured on Celtic Archaeology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth between 1910 and 1931, becoming Professor of Celtic Archaeology at UCC in 1915’.44 Ó Ríordáin, one of Mahr’s protégés, was awarded a National University of Ireland (NUI) travelling studentship in 1931 and subsequently carried out research at universities and museums in Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France and Scandinavia. His study tour was co-ordinated by Adolf Mahr who advised him where to go and provided him with letters of introduction. When Ó Ríordáin returned to Ireland he took up a position at the National Museum of Ireland, where he received further training.45 In 1936, he was appointed to the position of Professor of Celtic Archaeology at UCC. On Macalister’s retirement in 1943 Ó Ríordáin was appointed to the chair of Celtic Archaeology at UCD. According to Kilbride Jones, Ó Ríordáin ‘liked to regard himself as the doyen of Irish archaeologists’.46 He influenced M.J. O’Kelly who was trained on Unemployment Scheme sites and who later went on to be the first curator of the Cork Public Museum in 1944. O’Kelly succeeded Ó Ríordáin as Professor of Celtic Archaeology at University College Cork in 1946.

In 1945 Michael V. Duignan replaced Monsignor John Hynes at UCG.47 Hynes, ‘a popular administrator and minor historian’48 and the first Catholic to hold the position of Dean of Residence, had been appointed as Professor of Archaeology in 1924. He was described by Joseph Raftery, however, as ‘completely untrained in archaeological research and methods’.49 All of these appointments in the 1930s and 1940s reflect the gradual democratisation and professionalisation of Irish archaeology – its ‘coming of age’.50

Mahr’s own ambition for the National Museum to take the place of universities in the training of future archaeologists seemed to have been temporarily achieved in the decades prior to the Second World War. With the appointment of Mahr as Keeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland in 1927, a battle began for control of the interpretation of the Irish past between the National Museum of Ireland and Irish universities. This battle for intellectual supremacy was played out between Mahr and his museum allies on the one hand and the university men R.A.S Macalister and Eoin MacNeill on the other. The gradual change in attitude of younger archaeologists towards Macalister was, perhaps, fuelled by political and religious reasons, rather than professional ones. This was reflected, for example, in Macalister’s hesitation, when requested to deliver an address to the Royal Irish Academy in 1927. His choice of subject was ‘a matter of some difficulty, owing to the catholicity of the Academy’s interests’.51

When Ó Riordáin was promoted to the Chair of Celtic Archaeology at UCC, Mahr boasted that he had reason ‘to be proud that it was a pupil of mine who won this distinction, because it shows that the Museum is not only doing normal museum work but is even fulfilling the functions of a university’.52 Hencken, perhaps influenced by Mahr whom he described as ‘an old friend’,53 dismissed Macalister as ‘a nineteenth century antiquary’, commenting that:

Professor Macalister, it should be explained is British in origin rather than Irish and has the dislike of Americans common among the middle-class British combined with an unhealthy interest in American money. As the name of the chair which he holds might suggest, he is not an archaeologist in the modern sense but a 19th century antiquary. His British origin and lack of ability combined with his small stature and strict Methodism have put him at so grave a disadvantage in Dublin, at least in his own eyes, that he guards his position with the utmost jealousy.54

Macalister, as a scholarly and scientific man of his time, was very open to learning new archaeological techniques as they came into vogue and it is only in recent years that Macalister’s contribution to Irish archaeology has been fully recognised.55 Emphasis is often placed on Macalister’s lack of expertise. For example, Tarlach Ó Raifeartaigh dismissed Macalister’s reading of the ogham inscriptions in Kerry, stating that they ‘often owed more to imagination than observation’.56 Macalister’s excavation techniques were described as being ‘those of Schliemann rather than of Pitt Rivers’.57 However, Macalister was a prolific writer and produced over 350 texts, which included notes, articles and books. He was also involved in setting up the Archaeological Exploration Committee at the Royal Irish Academy. The derogatory description by Hencken does not fit with the fact that Macalister was pushing for an anthropological committee in the Royal Irish Academy in 1927 and the establishment of an Archaeological School within the universities.58 The archaeological work of the Harvard Mission, with its emphasis on extremely rich archaeological sites such as crannógs, which resulted in the retrieval of thousands of artefacts, allowed Mahr to reign supreme and to sideline the universities, who were not invited to participate. It also means that the Harvard Mission project became essentially a collections-driven exercise at that time. The reports produced were empiricist and descriptive while analysis and interpretation of archaeological data was limited. These ideas will be explored in more detail in subsequent chapters.

Harvard Mission Research Questions

By the time of the arrival of the Harvard Mission, the idea that Ireland was a Celtic country was deeply embedded. In 1920, Éamon de Valera, in an open letter to President Woodrow Wilson of the United States of America, stated ‘that the people of Ireland constitute a distinct and separate nation, ethnically, historically and tested by every standard of political science – entitled, therefore, to self-determination’.59 The question of when the Celts came to Ireland became an important research question for the Harvard Archaeological Expeditions. As Adolf Mahr was their main adviser and archaeological contact in Ireland his views on this matter were paramount. He did not agree with MacNeill’s and Macalister’s views that the Celts first came to Ireland in the Iron Age.60 He was convinced that the Late Bronze Age in Ireland represented ‘the conquest, by the Indogermanic world, of a very important stronghold of the pre-Aryans.’61 The idea of Goidels or Gaels, of Celtic origin, who introduced the Bronze Age in Ireland and Britain was popularised by Sir John Rhys in the nineteenth century with the publication of his book Celtic Britain.62 George Coffey was the first Irish archaeologist to suggest that the Celts came directly from the continent, bypassing Britain.63 Mahr expressed the views of Rhys in a lecture which he gave to the Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1929 under the title ‘The Archaeological Aspect of the Goidelic Question: a critical survey of the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age of Ireland’. The ideas expressed were not new and had been previously discussed by writers including R.A. Smith, O.G.S. Crawford and Henri Hubert.64 Mahr referred to Ireland as ‘the Goidelic country’, a term which Eoin MacNeill apparently abhorred.65 In 1919, MacNeill had dismissed the idea of a Celtic invasion during the Bronze Age, stating that ‘There is, then, no evidence from archaeology, history, or language, sufficient to establish even a moderate degree of probability for the theory of a Celtic occupation of Ireland or Britain during the Bronze Age’.66 The ‘Celticization’ of Ireland remained a research question for many decades to follow despite the fact that Ireland’s archaeological record, according to John Waddell, ‘offers no clear evidence for the Celtic settlements so often postulated.’67

In the 1930s the Harvard Archaeological Expeditions and the corresponding excavations undertaken under the Unemployment Schemes enabled Mahr to test his hypothesis of a Celtic invasion occurring in the Bronze Age. Numerous sites potentially dating to the Bronze Age were scientifically excavated. The main question which needed to be answered, in Mahr’s opinion, was whether the megaliths represented new cultural types and religious notions, or whether they represented ‘a wave of racial invasion and presumably, conquest’.68 V. Gordon Childe, in his paper ‘Scottish Megalithic Tombs and their Affinities’, published in 1933, plays down the colonising aspect of the megalithic phenomenon in favour of cultural diffusion.69 In the 1930s cultural diffusion was an antidote to the more militaristic explanation of cultural change involving invasions, with a superior race armed with its more sophisticated cultural products conquering an inferior one. In The Prehistory of Scotland published in 1935, Childe stresses the aristocratic character of the megaliths.70 In 1931 Christopher Hawkes had published his ideas about the ABC of the British Iron Age, which he explained in terms of continental Celtic invaders.71 Mahr’s own view was that the megalith-building was more than a cultural innovation and that ‘there was also racial immigration involved’.72 Mahr’s theories on Bronze Age Celts may have had a more practical dimension also. He observed that the La Tène material from Ireland hardly filled more than one or two average-sized museum cases in comparison with the 50 or more that could be filled with Bronze Age finds.73 Perhaps this pragmatic approach to acquiring large numbers of artefacts for his museum influenced Mahr’s choice of sites. Mahr, probably because he believed that the Celts arrived in the Bronze Age and the fact that he knew that there was a ‘mystifying scarcity’ of Iron Age settlement sites, did not give any Iron Age sites to the Harvard Team to excavate.

Hencken and Movius cautioned in their report on the Bronze Age cemetery cairn at Knockast, Co. Westmeath, that ‘an association of racial type with cultural diffusion must be regarded, however, as hypothetical until we have further evidence on which to base such a claim’.74 The cultural diffusionism of the American anthropologists perhaps reflects the cultural imperialism of America in the 1930s, achieved by peaceful means through philanthrophy, the funding of cultural global projects, global media and the spread of capitalism. Ireland’s relationship with America (and in particular Irish-America), was played out on Irish archaeological sites, north and south, during the period 1932 to 1936. This reflects Bruce Trigger’s idea that archaeological research is ‘shaped to a significant degree by the roles that particular nation states play, economically, politically, and culturally, as interdependent parts of the modern world-system’.75

Museum Display and the Creation of Archaeological Knowledge

Adolf Mahr, in his role at the National Museum, presided over the selection and display of artefacts. This invention of the nation through selective museum display was conditioned by the climate and thought of the day and was in turn influenced by social, political and ideological factors. Museums can be used as ‘instruments of state regulation’.76 For example, many totalitarian governments have sought to control the interpretation of archaeological data.77 This was the case with Germany and Italy, but democratic nation-states like Ireland were also involved in this process. The notion of studying archaeology as a way of gaining information about human history was accompanied by the development of modern nationalism.78 Nationalism influences the interpretation of culture and ‘sometimes takes pre-existing cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates pre-existing cultures’.79

The commissioning of the Lithberg Report in 1927 was the first step in the direction of the control of interpretation of artefact assemblages.80 The focus of the Harvard Mission and the Unemployment Scheme archaeologists, under advice from Adolf Mahr, was to recover objects dating to the Early Christian Period and the Bronze Age, the two ‘Golden Ages’ of Irish History. The focus of the collections was Ireland’s important place in the history of Europe. This was to be reflected in the display of European comparative material.

British comparative material was not suggested in the Lithberg Report despite the geographical and cultural proximity of Britain to Ireland. With regard to the subject of political perspective in relation to the Irish past, Macalister commented with insight in 1925:

The Anglophile looks back to the dim ages of the past […] and he can describe nothing but hordes of naked savages, living mere animal lives, and expending their whole time and energies in devastating tribal wars: a savagery from which England has raised us. The Anglophobe scans the same horizon and sees the cloud-clapped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, of a cast and imposing civilisation, devoted to letters and learning: a civilisation which England has destroyed.81

This provenancing of Irish material culture within a European context set the scene for future interpretations of archaeological sites, artefacts, the writing of archaeology and, therefore, the writing of cultural history. Lithberg also recommended the removal of casts of non-Irish architectural monuments and copies of objects to storage.

The partition of Ireland came with the passing of the Government of Ireland Act (1920). However, the collections of the National Gallery and the National Museum were not divided. Therefore, the National Museum collections represented the past of all of the island of Ireland and not just the Irish Free State. This was cultural aspiration reflecting political aspiration of a united Ireland, the past in essence becoming an aspirational future. The political nation-state, considered incomplete by those aspiring to a United Ireland, was identified with the cultural nation-state which encompassed the whole island. The Museum exhibitions, therefore, no longer reflected the greatness of the British Empire and Ireland’s place within it. Instead, the artefacts symbolising the greatness of an ancient independent nation with roots deep within a broad European Celtic culture were displayed. The work of the Harvard Mission contributed on a grand scale to this nationalist project.

The arrangement of artefacts can serve to visually articulate the power, identity and tradition of the ruling elite, and the creation of archaeological knowledge in the process. This is because ‘all archaeology is interpretation’.82 For as long as it is acceptable to view Ireland’s past as heroic, independent, creative, prehistoric and Celtic, it is acceptable to have items which visualise these concepts on prominent display. This is based on the premise that culture is political and a conduit for change, often reflecting or even foreshadowing political change. The establishing of a unique, utopian culture associated with a defined territorial space is the essence of nationalism. The interpretative process within the museum reflected the shifting paradigm of historical, political and cultural forces outside it.

Collections, exhibitions and individual displays of artefacts cannot be isolated from the larger cultural contexts of national identity formation. Artefacts can be appropriated as symbols of specific group identities which become fixed through the National Museum’s handling of them. In the Western model of national identity, nations were seen as ‘culture communities, whose members were united, if not made homogeneous, by common historical memories, myths, symbols and traditions’.83 The National Museum acted as a mirror of the nation-state with its assumptions of ethnic, linguistic and cultural hegemony, and became a microcosm of the culture community. Trigger explains that the main function of nationalist archaeology is ‘to bolster the pride and morale of nations or ethnic groups’.84 Museums serve as a repository for visual expressions of memory. They act as an aid to remembering an agreed-upon past.85 The National Museum of Ireland became the powerhouse of nationalist archaeology after 1922, the act of appropriation of the past being a political one. Cultural and political nationalism were interwoven and political ideas were embedded in cultural ideology.86 As a cultural tentacle of the independent Irish Free State Government, the National Museum was in the privileged position of being able not only to reflect change but to act as an agent or catalyst for it. The Lithberg Report resulted in the National Museum of Ireland being effectively transformed into a strong state-sponsored visual statement about national aspirations and became an important symbol of the independent state.

American Reconnaissance Trip, 1931

The American academics believed that Ireland played a leading role in the cultural development of Northern and Western Europe. Reasons for choosing the Irish Free State included the ‘extremely meagre’ knowledge of Stone Age peoples and the ‘comparatively ill-known’ archaeology of Ireland.87 The Harvard anthropologist L. Lloyd Warner made the relevant contacts in Ireland to pave the way for the work of the Harvard Mission anthropologists and archaeologists. He directed the work in social anthropology but was also responsible for all three strands in Ireland until the work was complete. In 1931, Hencken and Warner arrived on a reconnaissance trip to determine what sites they would excavate and where they would carry out their anthropological surveys. They also made a second visit. A preliminary survey of the country was carried out to see if the proposed research was practical. They met with Cardinal MacRory, Catholic Primate of all Ireland; Eoin MacNeill and his brother, the Governor-General, James MacNeill (served 1928–32); Professor George O’Brien, Professor of National Economics and Professor of Political Economy at UCD; Séamus Ó Duillearga, then lecturer at University College Dublin and editor of Béaloideas, the journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society; and Adolf Mahr. Hooton noted in his manuscript that all of these people approved of his proposed project and some helped with the preliminary survey.88

In 1931, Mahr was first approached about the Harvard Archaeological Mission and agreed to meet Hencken on 3 July 1931, where Mahr extended ‘a most cordial and enthusiastic welcome’ to him’.89 They spent the day discussing the proposed project and the only difficulty which Mahr foresaw was the attitude of Macalister. Hencken assessed Mahr as ‘a thoroughly up-to-date archaeologist in the very best sense, and, except when he lapses into his feud with Macalister, is a man of the broadest vision’. He believed that the antagonism between Mahr and Macalister was because ‘each feels that by virtue of his position he is State Archaeologist of Saorstát Éireann’.90 It would seem that the Irish Free State Government also wanted to sideline Macalister and place the National Museum at the centre of cultural endeavour. It was Mahr and not Macalister who was commissioned by the state to write a book to coincide with the hosting of the thirty-first International Eucharistic Congress, which took place in Dublin in June 1932.91 However, Hencken was pragmatic enough to remember that the point of view of both Mahr and Macalister had to be respected when dealing with Irish archaeology, as Macalister was Chairman and Mahr Secretary of the Standing Committee of the influential National Monuments Advisory Council (NMAC), established under the National Monuments Act, 1930.

On the morning of 3 July 1931, Macalister came to the National Museum to speak to Hencken. Before their meeting Macalister had a private meeting with Mahr. Mahr later told Hencken that he had tried to persuade Macalister of the benefits of the proposed Harvard Expeditions to Irish archaeology. Afterwards Hencken and Macalister had lunch to discuss the matter. On 7 July 1931 the machiavellian Mahr took advantage of Macalister’s absence from Dublin to hold a meeting in his house between the Standing Committee of the NMAC, Hencken and Warner. Sir Philip Hanson, the Chairman of the Board of Works and Harold J. Leask, the Inspector of National Monuments, were present. Hencken concluded that those assembled were ‘enthusiastic’ about the project. Justice Liam Price suggested that General O’Hara of the Irish Air Force might arrange for some aerial photography. After this meeting Hencken was satisfied that he had all the necessary support of the Irish officials and specially Mahr. Mahr had suggested that the Royal Irish Academy might cooperate with the Harvard expeditions. Macalister was President of the Royal Irish Academy at that time and Hencken was hopeful that he might be persuaded.92

Hencken stressed to Macalister at their meeting that Harvard did not have a special interest in forming an Irish archaeological collection and only wanted a representative sample of material. He also emphasised that they would not interfere in sites that Irish archaeologists were planning to dig. As Hencken knew that Macalister had planned to dig both Newgrange and Tara, these would not be included in Harvard’s programme. At the end of the lunch Hencken felt that Macalister ‘was prepared to help rather than to hinder’. When Mahr was informed about their successful meeting he replied that ‘we could then be assured of a license to dig anywhere except at Tara and New Grange in twenty-four hours’.93

It was suggested in a Hooton manuscript that the Irish authorities were most anxious that copper mines in the south of Ireland be excavated by the Harvard Mission.94 These included six early mine shafts for copper working at Derrycarhoon, County Cork and others in Killarney, County Kerry. Grooved hammers dating to the Bronze Age had been found at Killarney. As Irish copper was important on the continent during the Early Bronze Age, these sites, which had never been excavated, might reveal very important information about metal-working. It was Hooton’s view that one of the mining sites in the south should be excavated as soon as possible because ‘this is an undertaking that Macalister, Mahr, and indeed every other British archaeologist would welcome with enthusiasm’.95 However, Hencken and his team did not act on Hooton’s suggestions.

During the 1931 trip, attempts were made to find a county which would fit the criteria of the social and anthropological requirements of the Harvard Mission while also being suitable from an archaeological point of view. The counties which were of immediate interest to Hencken were counties Clare, Sligo and Antrim. Hencken considered these counties and Co. Meath to have the best and greatest variety of archaeological sites suitable for excavation.96 Hencken was also very interested in Rathcroghan, in County Roscommon, the seat of Ailill and Maeve, which he believed to have been occupied in the first centuries of the Christian era. Hencken considered Meath an unsuitable county from the point of view of a social and anthropological survey but did not explain the reasons for this view in his report. In any event he considered Tara to be ‘a labor far beyond the scope of the expedition at present contemplated, and Meath without Tara would be unsatisfactory’.97 In his report Hencken noted that Mahr placed particular emphasis on County Sligo being the ‘best single archaeological area in the Free State’.98

When Hencken and his team arrived in Ireland in 1931 the site selection process would have been very difficult without the assistance of amateur archaeologists. On 3 July 1931, Mahr wired Henry Morris in Sligo of Hencken’s impending arrival there the following day. Morris, an Irish scholar and schools inspector, was an amateur archaeologist.99 He drove Hencken to approximately thirty-five sites over the course of two days, 4–5 July 1931. Hencken described Sligo as ‘a veritable Carnac and as yet awaits detailed exploration’.100 Hencken returned to Ireland on 17 July 1931 and travelled to Limerick. Mahr arranged for him to be met there by a local amateur archaeologist, J.N.A. Wallace, who had contributed a number of papers on Irish silver to the North Munster Antiquarian Journal.101 He was described by Hencken as an ‘eminent Limerick archaeologist’.102 Hencken and Wallace spent two days travelling around Clare and visited a total of twenty-four sites. The attention of the Harvard Mission archaeologists had been drawn to the Bronze Age burial site at Carrownacon, Ballyglass, County Mayo by one of the museum ‘correspondents’, Sean Langan of University College, Galway, who made arrangements to carry out the work. Movius explained that when the Harvard archaeologists expressed an interest in digging the site, ‘Mr. Langan kindly had it located by men sounding in the field with bars’.103 It was subsequently excavated by the Second Harvard Archaeological Mission. Hencken was shown the site at Lagore, County Meath by Patrick Ward of Dunshaughlin in 1933. The following year he excavated it under the auspices of the Third Harvard Archaeological Expedition to Ireland.

Adolf Mahr and the Harvard archaeologists were interested in extending the Irish Free State archaeological programme to Northern Ireland. County Antrim was considered to be unsuitable for a social and physical anthropological survey because of its history of colonisation. Antrim was rich archaeologically with plenty of forts, ‘dolmens’ and lake-dwellings. In Hencken’s view its main importance was that there were ‘a series of sites which have produced evidences of post-Palaeolithic stone cultures, said to be Asturian and Campignian’ providing ‘the earliest traces of man in the island’.104 He believed that these early inhabitants of Ireland ‘had made their way into Northern Ireland from the Continent when both Ireland and Great Britain were joined together and to the rest of Europe by land-bridges’.105 Hencken considered that it would be easy to excavate in the North without prejudicing Harvard’s work in the Irish Free State. Also, they would be likely to discover more finds which they could export to the United States. Movius carried out an examination of the lithic sites in Northern Ireland between 18 July and 1 August 1933.106 This work was facilitated by the Ancient Monuments Advisory Council, whose chairman, William Patrick Carmody, the Dean of Down, extended to them ‘every hospitality and facilitated our work in every possible way’.107 Excavations in Northern Ireland commenced during the Third Harvard Archaeological Expedition in 1934.

Adolf Mahr could see how potentially useful the archaeologist Claude Blake Whelan’s knowledge and assistance would be to the Harvard Expedition in Northern Ireland. Blake Whelan was later credited by Hencken as ‘the only archaeologist in Ireland who has any real knowledge of the Irish Stone Age’.108 In 1933, Blake Whelan brought Movius on a guided tour of the lithic sites in Northern Ireland. He was from Belfast and worked for the Electricity Board of Northern Ireland and was a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Hencken noted that it was often hard to discern the places where Stone Age man lived as ‘his graves are largely unknown and his presence can only be detected by the well-trained eye in the small pieces of flint and other stones that he shaped into tools’.109 According to him, local archaeologists who were familiar with such sites were unlikely to guide foreign excavators to them. This was not the case in Ireland as they had ‘an excellent and unselfish supporter’ in Blake Whelan, who had ‘an unrivalled knowledge of the homes of prehistoric hunters of the Irish Stone Age.’110 Hencken admitted that without Blake Whelan’s help their work ‘could not have been accomplished’.111 Mahr made the suggestion that Blake Whelan should be encouraged to carry out an excavation with Hencken and Movius, which should be subsequently published under Blake Whelan’s name. This was to be financed by the Harvard Mission.112 Movius and Blake Whelan dug at Rathlin Island, in 1934.113 This was a site which had been found by Blake Whelan some years previously but it had not been excavated or published. Blake Whelan was elected a delegate for Northern Ireland to the Prehistoric Society of France in 1932, on the proposal of Dr Marcel Baudouin, the honorary president of the society, with whom Whelan had collaborated on a paper on the diorite axes of Rathlin Island.114

The sites which Blake Whelan showed Movius included the Mesolithic raised beach site of Larne; Island Magee with its lower estuarine deposits ‘containing probably the oldest cultural horizon in Ireland’; the raised beach at Glenarm; the raised beach at Cushendun, below which ‘is an industry possibly allied to Azilian’; Bronze Age middens at Whitepark Bay; the Bann Valley with its Neolithic stone industries; and Lough Neagh.115 A Mesolithic site at Glenarm, County Antrim, which had been discovered by Blake Whelan, was excavated between 5–25 July 1934 by Movius and his team. Hooton was informed that, except for Larne, this was the first Irish raised beach section ever examined; it provided important chronological information’.116 Over a ton of flint tools were sent to the Belfast Museum. In Movius’s report, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in 1937, the author commended Blake Whelan because he had ‘noted the stratigraphy and photographed the exposed section’.117

The Harvard Mission archaeologists wished to excavate some megalithic tombs, which they believed were introduced to Ireland from Spain, and accordingly they identified some undisturbed tombs they wished to dig. They were interested in excavating Rathcroghan which they believed was built by the Celts who had arrived in Ireland from the continent about the fourth century BC. Hencken expressed an interest in the Moytirra megalithic cemetery as it was the only site in Ireland which had produced Breton bell beakers at that time. These highly decorated pots date from the Late Neolithic period through to the Bronze Age (c.2900–1800 BC) and were found over large areas of central and western Europe. He was also interested in monuments such as the stone tumuli visible on the summits of Keishcorran, Slieve Deane and Ox Mountains, a lake-dwelling near Ballymote, numerous forts, and the monastic settlement on Inismurray.

However, despite its archaeological riches, Sligo was considered to be unsuitable for a social and anthropological survey. The reason for this, as Warner pointed out, was that ‘Sligo has always been one of the gateways of Ireland’. Hencken considered that:

It is unfortunate that this very factor, which helps to render Sligo useless from the point of view of social anthropology, makes it of extreme archaeological significance, especially at the beginning of the Metal Ages, when the dolmens were being built and when Ireland played a leading role in the cultural development of Northern and Western Europe. At only one other time, the early Christian period, has Irish civilization been of comparable importance.118

Hencken registered his interest in the Carrowkeel passage-tomb cemetery as it ‘closely resembled architecturally ‘the best cupola tombs of the Iberian peninsula’. He was also fascinated by the passage tomb complex at Carrowmore in Sligo.119 Morris showed him the megalithic monument known as Leac Chon Mhic Ruis, ‘an immense cairn upon which is a megalithic monument 100 feet long consisting of a courtyard upon which open three double-chambered galleries’. Morris also showed him other similar tombs.120

Hencken came to the conclusion that if Clare was decided upon for the full survey – social, physical and archaeological – it would be best to do an archaeological survey based on published materials. Sites could be planned, photographed and some selected for excavation. As he regarded few sites to be suitable for excavation in Clare, other forts, lake-dwellings and tumuli could be excavated around the country in an effort to throw light on Clare in particular and on Ireland in general. As Clare formed part of the old kingdom of Connaught he thought it advisable that other sites selected should be in this area. This would include the dolmens of Sligo and Rathcroghan. Warner subsequently wrote to Hencken and expressed the view that County Clare was better from his point of view. Hencken was not as enthusiastic about excavating sites in Clare as he had been about those in Sligo as the former ‘has only a few of much interest to the excavator’. He regarded the numerous dolmens of Clare to ‘belong to the family of large cists, the least interesting and instructive type’. He was also disappointed at the number of them that were ‘badly wrecked’ and were therefore unlikely to conceal undisturbed prehistoric burials. He was convinced that ‘although Clare is not the richest archaeological area in Ireland, the Irish field as a whole, which is a largely untouched one, promises amply to repay the work now contemplated’.121 In 1931, Hencken’s attention was drawn to a large Bronze Age mound at Poulawack, and a cliff fort at Cahercommaun, both in County Clare.122 Both of these sites were to be excavated by the Harvard Mission in 1934.123

Hencken expressed a preference for excavating in Sligo because it was less costly than Clare where workmen were paid 4/- a day before the change from the gold standard. This linked a currency’s value to that of gold and a country on the gold standard could not increase the amount of money in circulation without also increasing its gold reserves. America abandoned the gold standard in 1933. Hencken came to the conclusion that ‘it cannot be said that Clare is a very hopeful area for excavating, though there are a few sites worth trying’.124 He also noted that ‘Much excavation could be done in Sligo for comparatively little money, since workmen could be hired for 3/- or 3/6 a day before the abandonment of the gold standard and probably no question of compensation would arise’.125 When Hencken and Movius visited the Bronze Age burial site at Ballyglass, County Mayo, to organise the excavations, they found to their dismay that the locals demanded exorbitant wages of a pound a day and landowners expected expensive compensation. They were unwilling to pay wages of this amount as it would set a precedent for future excavations. Mahr travelled to the area on their behalf and managed to renegotiate the terms so that workmen accepted ten shillings a day. He was unable to reduce the level of compensation due to ‘superstitious fears’. Compensation of £5 was expected for a small burial compared with a similar amount paid to a farmer for a large crannóg in the Midlands.126 The excavation only took one day. A cremated burial was discovered and artefacts included a rare type of bronze axe and several flint implements.127

Hencken was interested in historic sites, reflecting his multidisciplinary training by Hector Munro Chadwick, the English philologist and historian who founded the ‘Archaeology and Anthropology Tripos Section B’, at the University of Cambridge. Hencken believed that the numerous forts in County Clare ‘probably began with the Celtic invasion of the Iron Age’.128 He was interested in one called Cahermacnaughten because it was the seat of the O’Davorens. This stone ring fort was inhabited by the O’Davoren family and their law school until the end of the seventeenth century. However, he thought that it was unlikely that many artefacts would be discovered from the stone forts as there was so little soil above the native limestone. Also, the problem of shifting a large amount of stones from the interior of these forts before excavation could begin would be costly. There were some forts suitable for excavation, including the very large Cahermoghan fort with its triple fortification. This was of interest because the Bronze Age ‘great Clare gold hoard’ had been found nearby at Mooghaun in 1854. Hencken considered that ‘the place looks more promising than any other in the county’.129 Among other historical sites in County Clare which aroused Hencken’s curiosity was Magh Adhair, a flat-topped mound surrounded by a fosse, and the inauguration place of the Kings of Thomond; and the monastic site of Inis Cealtra. In 1931, the Harvard Mission archaeologists were of the opinion that the Celts built the crannógs and were interested in tracing evidence for Celtic continuity in the archaeological record. In his report, Hencken wrote that ‘both the forts and the crannógs were occupied in Early Christian times, and indeed, some of the oldest monasteries were closely patterned after the former. It was at this time that Ireland produced its celebrated Celtic Art which probably represents one of the highest cultural levels ever attained by the early peoples of western Europe’.130

The crannógs selected by Mahr and Hencken for excavation proved to have very rich artefactual assemblages. Approximately two thirds of the work programme of the five Harvard Missions was devoted to carrying out excavations on three crannóg sites – Ballinderry 1 in County Westmeath, Ballinderry 2 in County Offaly and Lagore in County Meath.131

De Valera and the Harvard Mission

County Clare was chosen as a representative county for the detailed anthropological survey. No doubt this decision pleased Éamon de Valera who represented East Clare in the Dáil. Warner wrote to de Valera on 25 July 1932 explaining the nature of the proposed project and promising that it would be financed by the Harvard School of Business Administration:

The proposed research in County Clare by Harvard University will study the socio-economic life of the people and will excavate and survey several archaeological sites. We will be particularly concerned with the study of market areas, the relation of farm holding to market areas and family life, the interplay of social relations between town and county, and in general the total economic structure and life of the town of Ennis and the county.132

Warner believed that they could add to the fund of economic knowledge that they were obtaining in America by a similar research in Ireland, so that the results of the work ‘will be of value to the Irish political economist, industrialist, and business man and will not be of mere academic interest’. He stated that ‘our whole approach will be entirely objective and we will feel that we have failed if any prejudice or bias comes into our results in any way whatever’.133 De Valera sent a positive reply to this letter stating that, as he understood it, ‘it will be a scientific study of the socio-economic life of the Irish people and a research into the archaeological sites of the ancient Irish and in no way will be political but only interested in obtaining the objective truth through careful collection of the facts’.134

Warner had a meeting with de Valera whom he described as ‘a very fine man who is intelligent and grasped what I was talking about immediately’. Warner had also to persuade Bishop Fogarty of Killaloe to give him permission to carry out the survey work in Clare. Bishop Fogarty and de Valera were not on good personal terms. Fogarty disapproved of de Valera’s politics and had referred to him as a ‘Dictator’.135 The Harvard team was sensitive to the political and cultural conditions in Ireland during their research and were therefore anxious to obtain permission and support from senior political and religious figures. Warner received his letter of introduction from de Valera and the Harvard Mission began its work shortly afterwards. Warner continued to be worried about the political situation in Ireland and wrote to Hooton on 26 July 1932 to express his fears: ‘The possibilities of civil war are ever present and it is generally understood that I.R.A. gunmen are quietly organising and importing arms and ammunition from America to start a revolution if de Valera’s policies fail, or if de Valera becomes more moderate’.136

One of the reasons Clare was chosen by the American anthropologists was because they considered it to be ‘in transition’ between a modern and traditional society.137 The ‘Harvard University Social and Economic Survey’ was led by Conrad Maynadier Arensberg and Solon Toothaker Kimball. Warner had supervised the PhD theses of both men. Arensberg, who was a graduate student in anthropology came to Ireland on a Sheldon Travelling Fellowship. He studied at Trinity College Dublin and at UCD under George O’Brien, Professor of National Economics and Political Economy, and under Professor Eoin McNeill. He also acquired a knowledge of the Irish language.138 Arensberg made other useful contacts in the academic community in Ireland, including the folklorist Séamus Ó Duillearga. Arensberg and Kimball credited Ó Duillearga with ‘paving our way among the country folk’139 as it was he who had encouraged the locals in North Clare to cooperate and share their knowledge of traditional songs and stories with the Americans. Arensberg and Kimball studied the country people of North Clare and the inhabitants of Ennis, observing the way of life of the small farmer class and the townspeople, their relationships and their traditions. They used innovative ethnographic research methods for examining the way of life of ordinary people using an interdisciplinary approach. The results of this work were published in two books, The Irish Countryman and Family and Community in Ireland.140 Hooton expressed the view that ‘Ultimately all of this material will contribute to a single unified anthropological history and analyses of this gifted and virile nation’.141