A history of Ireland in 100 objects

KESHCARRIGAN BOWL, EARLY FIRST CENTURY:There was no Celtic invasion of Ireland. This does not mean, however, that the island was unaffected by the upheavals in Celtic Europe caused by another group of invaders: the spread of the Roman Empire into Gaul and Britain.

In the decades after 60 BC, Rome pushed its frontiers northwards through Gaul (roughly today’s France) to the Rhine and westwards to the Atlantic. In 43 BC, the emperor Claudius set in train the full-scale invasion that gradually created the Roman province of Britannia. The conquest of Britain was slow and violent, and the shock waves were certainly felt in Ireland.

Found in a tributary of the Shannon in Co Leitrim, this small bronze bowl was given a fine polished finish by being spun on a lathe. But its glory is the superbly cast handle in the shape of a bird’s head with a long, curving neck, an upturned beak and big, staring eyes that were once inlaid with glass or enamel. It is probably a stylised version of a duck.

Birds in general have a strongly supernatural aspect in early Irish culture, as messengers from the otherworld or mediators between gods and humans. The bowl was thus probably used in drinking bouts that had a ritual as well as a social function: we know that a drinking ceremony was part of the inauguration of a king.

The Keshcarrigan bowl is similar to those found in Devon and Cornwall and in Brittany. It may have been made in Ireland (a smithy with similar objects has been found near Ballinasloe, Co Galway) but using British prototypes. There is little doubt that it represents some movement of people into Ireland. Some of the Gallic Belgic tribes crossed into Britain as refugees from the Romans, displacing native people. These movements of population reached Ireland in the century before and after the birth of Christ.

Southwestern England had connections with Ireland going back thousands of years: Cornish tin was used to make Irish bronze. It is not surprising that, in times of stress, these trading contacts would be deepened into actual movement of people.

A bowl similar to this one, found at Fore, Co Westmeath, is associated with what seems to be a Gallo-British-type burial and also, remarkably, with a Roman boat. The technique of finishing the Keshcarrigan bowl with a lathe is also new to Ireland, though it would become central to later Irish art, including the Ardagh and Derrynaflan chalices.

Perhaps a little later than the Keshcarrigan bowl, there is a cemetery on Lambay Island, Co Dublin, that contains the remains of people from north Britain, almost certainly well-to-do members of the Brigantes, a tribe whose revolt against the Romans was crushed in 74 AD. Roman expansion was the central fact of European life at this time. Ireland could not escape its consequences.

Thanks to Eamonn Kelly

Where to see it National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology, Kildare Street, Dublin 2, 01-6777444, museum.ie