A 3,000-year-old flesh-hook that was most likely used in warrior ceremonies is on loan for seven months to the Ulster Museum, writes Dick Ahlstrom.
A great feast was under way and a giant cauldron boiled and bubbled over a fire in the centre of the large wooden hall. Smoke drifted up through an opening in the rough-hewn roof and the flames illuminated the warrior king and his followers who celebrated after a successful battle.
Then a servant steps forward wielding a bronze tool, richly decorated with ravens, swans and cygnets, and at its end two dangerous-looking hooks. He approaches the cauldron and plunges the weapon, a flesh-hook, down into the steaming water only to fetch out a pork hind quarter, deftly dropping it down in front of the king ready for the carving.
This same flesh-hook or at least one typical of the Late Bronze Age makes a welcome return from the British Museum to its home in Northern Ireland for a seven-month visit to the Ulster Museum in Belfast. Recovered in 1829 from Garry Bog just north of Ballymoney, Co Antrim, it became part of the permanent display in London but is on loan until May 2005.
The grisly sounding flesh-hook features two stout hooks at its working end and may have had a number of purposes, explains Mr Richard Warner, keeper of archaeology and ethnology at the Ulster Museum. It may have been used for human torture or as a goad for driving animals, but its most likely main use was during feasting, he says.
"The favoured present guess is it was used for hooking large pieces of pork out of caldrons," he says. "We are pretty confident to say this is a ritual instrument and associated with feasting."
The highly decorated tool dates to about 1,000 BC. Radio carbon dating of fragments of wood found with the three bronze pieces of the tool allowed researchers to date its making to within 100 years either side of 3,000 years ago, he says.
This was the early part of the period known as the Late Bronze Age, a time when Ireland was dominated by a warrior class who ruled from hill forts. The time was rich but violent with large quantities of weapons, bronze tools and gold ornaments being produced, according to the Museum.
Also dating from this time were large bronze cauldrons, most likely used by the aristocracy and their followers to feed large numbers of people at great feasts, says Warner. The flesh-hook represented a useful, ornamental device for pulling boiling meat out of the cooking pots.
The example recovered from the Garry Bog is important for a number of reasons, he says. "It is highly decorated. It isn't unique in that other pieces of flesh-hooks have been found, but this is the most complete." Its level of decoration adds weight to arguments that the flesh-hook was used at times of celebration.
It features three-dimensional birds in bronze along its length including two ravens, two swans and three cygnets. The three bronze components found in the bog would have been placed on a pole about four feet long, he said with the hooks at one end, the swans and cygnets on a hollow bronze sleeve positioned in the middle of the pole and the ravens at the other end. This portion also features a knob and ring, probably making the tool easier to handle. The surviving wooden piece showed it also was decorated with tiny strips of bronze arranged in a herringbone pattern.
It is unlikely that the hook was lost or hidden in the bog. Rather, it was probably offered to gods or demons of the watery "Otherworld", says Warner. Many contemporary bronze and gold objects have been retrieved from bogs, lakes, rivers and fens, placed there intentionally as offerings.
"Our belief is Late Bronze Age people had a strong belief that ponds and lakes were a way to get to the Otherworld." Offerings tossed into the water would quickly reach their intended targets taking this path.
The flesh-hook may have been placed in the Garry Bog as a tribute to the gods. A pair of bronze trumpets was found nearby, and almost certainly would have had a ritual and ceremonial purpose.
The Garry Bog flesh-hook goes on display at the Ulster Museum on October 29th and remains until May 2005