Plans and Profiles: Claidhbh Ó Gibne Experimenting with Neolithic Watercraft in Ireland

Claidhbh Ó Gibne

Over the summer I exchanged a few e-mail with a fellow in Ireland named Claidhbh Ó Gibne who researches and builds traditional skin currachs.  He's undertaken an ambitious project to construct a larger ocean going vessel built using the same principles as the smaller currachs.  We know that Ireland's Neolithic inhabitants were part of a larger sphere of contact with Europe, but what do we know about their methods for making sea voyages 5000 years ago?  I asked him about his project:

Plans and Profiles #20. Claidhbh Ó Gibne Experimenting with Neolithic Watercraft in Ireland

1) Tell me a little bit about your project.

The Bovinda on the water

I have always been intrigued with the Stone Age, perhaps its because I have lived in an area where, 5,000 years ago, a great complex of burial chambers was built - known as Newgrange. This neolithic passage tomb culture travelled across from Europe to Ireland before the era of metal. They then continued to voyage northwards, settling in Orkney, north of Scotland where they strove to leave a legacy to their very existence in the form of a great passage tombs. The elephant in the room of course is the sea that lies between all the these countries and as a lure it was just too exciting not to bite. The other aspect of this, is the human story that tells of how we developed as a civilisation once we obtained a manageable food source, namely - the cow, which allowed us expand to the further corners of the world. This is what inspired the Newgrange Currach Project: the construction of a wicker framed, skin-covered boat used by mariners in prehistoric times. We plan to recreate ancient voyages that would have been undertaken by our ancestors over five thousand years ago. This 36 ft leather boat, Bovinda, was built as much as a trophy to salute human endeavour.while at the same time, as an acknowledgement that the cow today, is seen reluctantly as an archaic form of food production. Perhaps it symbolises the end of an era on the human journey and the beginning of this new voyage we seek to begin, that of renewal. (Hope that's not too deep!!)


2) How did you become interested in this particular problem?

The area where I live, along by the river Boyne, was one of the last places where woven skin boats were made to fish salmon, surviving on our river until as late as 1961, so I always had an interest in making these craft and reintroducing them onto the river. The question that all the archaeologists pose when talking about the tomb builders, is: How did our Neolithic ancestors transport such large stones from locations along the coastline which they used to ornate their tombs. When weaving our small traditional river boats, it became obvious to me that any shape or size could be made using this traditional method, and therefore I began to experiment with them.


3) Has your project changed since you began?

Bovinda sea trials

The swings and roundabouts associated with any project like this are so horrendous, that no one would have taken it on if they had known in advance. To answer whether my project has changed, yes...like a contortionist's performance out on stage, but like all good shows it worked its self out in the end. I would have liked to have used more raw hide in the construction and perhaps have had velum for the sails. A lot more experimentation is needed on leather tanning, especially natural sleeves of the lower legs of animals. I would have liked for the boat to have been smaller and lighter but I have had to add in a lot of extra support boughs due to its size. It quickly became apparent that the boat was to be double in size and have half the work force - as I said swings and roundabouts! The project was initially to be a woven imitation of the 36 foot Colmcille that is kept by the Causeway heritage group in Co Antrim. But a film documentary maker's imagination combined with a sailor's appetite always for more saw the project grow incrementally out of all proportion, least to say neither sailor nor film maker were there at the end.


4) If you could ask a Stone Age mariner one question, what would it be?

I would ask him (or her) if they tonged or sewed the leather or skin onto their boats. If they tonged, I would ask if they used bird bone flutes to offer the rawhide thread through the holes? Or if they sewed I would ask what materials and tools was most successful for sewing with and if they ever came across an alternative to black spruce roots, as we don't have that over here! Ooops - think that's more than one question!! Basically, I would quiz them about their sewing techniques....I spent many many months experimenting with different materials and stitching methods before I settled on one!


5) Has your research taught you anything about yourself ?

Yes it has! I realise now how much I love a challenging journey, not too bothered about the destination, just the journey getting there!
Also I learnt that having no money for long stretches of time can hurt the hell out of your dignity, but not your pride!


6) How do you unwind when you need to get away from your research?

I like to unwind by playing music on my fiddle! And as this seems to wind everyone else up in the morning, I normally retire to the out doors with my cup of tea and play to the blackbirds. I like to meet up with friends and have fun on the river in our little leather boats, and the odd evening I get to play music with my sons and daughter who, being very good musicians manage to put up with me...only because I'm their Dad!!
Where I live, there are some beautiful walks at my doorstep and a dog who will always remind you. When the house is quiet, or when I manage to find a little corner for myself away from the busy bustle of the day, I love wood carving and I'm big into cultural heritage so carving Celtic design with knots as deep as I can make them is my favourite. I like to do illustrations and to draw Celtic designs which usually turns into a carving after some time, or yes, you got it, drawing detailed sketches of the boat. I get great enjoyment out of writing too!


7) What archaeological discovery or project do you wish you could have been part of?

Don't think a leather boat has ever been found but if ever there is such a find, thats where I would like to be, looking for answers to many of my questions, seeing how close I was to the real McCoy! So I would like to be on an Archaeological excavation working on a dig that uncovered a sea-going leather boat somewhere along the coast, in a nomadic settlement along side some middens!


8) What's next for you?

By next March, weather permitting of course, we hope to take Bovinda out again. The leather square sail is at present being improved upon and time permitting I will have a small leather lateen sail to experiment with too.. The oars of alder poles are at the moment being bent in the opposite direction in an attempt to straighten out the kinks. and I've had some time to experiment with two new quarter rudders made of elm and oak. So a lot going on and a lot to do -


9) What books or websites would you recommend if people want to learn more about your area of interest in general? Or your project in particular?

Of course I will recommend my own book for reading about skin currachs (Boyne Currach - from beneath the shadow of Newgrange, published by Fourcourts Press 2012). Other books that I would recommend would be Facing the Ocean by Barry Cunliffe, Sinews of Survival and Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. With website we have a website www.boynecurrach.com and a face book page too! when I was researching about the boat I found that PaleoPlanet was the most helpful forum with many subscribers only to willing to give advise and suggestions.

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Are you part of an archaeological research project or perhaps you know an archaeology student who could use a boost in exposure. I'd love to hear your recommendations for future interviews. elfshot.tim@gmail.com

Photo Credits: 

All photos Claidhbh Gibne
Plans and Profiles Banner, Tim Rast based on a linocut by Lori White

Plans and Profiles: Kieran Westley Researching Submerged Landscapes North of Ireland

Kieran Westley with a rather nice flint
blade found about 2m underwater
(photo taken by Wes Forysthe)

Kieran Westley is an archaeologist with the Environmental Sciences Research Institute at the University of Ulster who specializes in Maritime Archaeology, especially reconstructing and surveying submerged landscapes.  He completed a Post-Doc at Memorial University following the completion of his PhD at the University of Southampton.  No matter where you are in the world, the sea level has changed over time.  This change happens as the earth's crust moves up or down and water is added or removed to the world's oceans through melting or freezing of water in polar ice caps or continental ice sheets which causes coastlines to erode or be built up.  In Ireland, the earliest coastal sites have been inundated by rising relative sea level.  These are the sites that Kieran is looking for...

Plans and Profiles #14. Kieran Westley, Submerged Coastlines and Archaeological Sites north of Ireland

1) Tell me a little bit about your project.

Rough palaeo-geographic reconstruction showing the 

north of Ireland assuming a sea-level fall of -30m 

which could have taken place as early as 13,500 cal BP. 

The project involves attempting to identify, map, reconstruct and sample submerged archaeological landscapes in the north of Ireland. We're looking at submerged landscapes because sea-levels around Ireland were lower during its earliest known colonization - the early Mesolithic (dated to around 10-9500 cal BP). We know that these early colonists needed at least some sort of maritime adaptation to get to Ireland because the available sea-level evidence suggests that it was separated from mainland Britain at this time despite the lowered sea-level. In addition, worked flints have also been found on at least one outlying island which were also not connected to Ireland and hence would have needed watercraft to get there. However, probably due to sea-level rise, we have very little evidence of these coastal/maritime adaptations onshore, and therefore have to look for it offshore. An additional reason for researching these submerged landscapes relates to cultural resource management. We're seeing increasing development of the continental shelf; for example, cables, pipelines, offshore wind turbines etc. All of these activities have the potential to damage or destroy the undersea archaeological record. Therefore, in order to manage and protect these archaeologically important submerged landscapes, we need much more information on where they are located and preserved. In other parts of NW Europe, submerged landscapes are much better studied, for example in the Baltic and the North Sea; however, Ireland really remains a blank slate as far as this type of research goes.

Intertidal peat layer exposed on the beach at Portrush West Bay

The actual methodology involves two strands. Firstly, large-scale mapping and reconstruction of submerged landscapes using marine geophysical data. These include high resolution multibeam sonar systems which map seabed topography and substrate, and sub-bottom profiling systems which give acoustic cross-sections through the seabed allowing us to map buried layers. Secondly, a program of diver survey to ground-truth potential submerged landscape features, and identify archaeological remains.

So far, we’ve used the data to create rough approximations of palaeo-geography, and identify high potential areas where the palaeo-landscape has been preserved. These have formed the basis of our program of diver survey. Three main sites with palaeo-landscape evidence have been investigated so far. Firstly, a probable wave-cut rocky shoreline west of Ballycastle in c. 12 to 15m water depth. While features like this provide a nice indication that sea-levels were lower, they unfortunately can’t be dated directly. Secondly, a buried and submerged peat layer in the West Bay Portrush, in at least 3m water depth which extends off a thick layer of intertidal peat which is occasionally exposed when storms strip away the beach sand. We’ve traced this peat offshore with sub-bottom profile data and sampled it to get a date of c. 8900-9200 cal BP. Finally, another submerged peat (which has been dated 8700-9400 cal BP) and a small concentration of worked flints (which include distinctive early Irish Mesolithic forms) in c. 2-3m water depth are also under investigation. These come from two small adjacent bays (the flints in one and the peat in another) in Eleven Ballyboes townland, County Donegal. The bay with the flints has a collection of around 1500 water-rolled intertidal lithics amassed by a local collector, but the underwater finds we’ve made in the last year include much fresher examples and could therefore represent the remnants of an in situ source deposits More work confirming this and also investigating the submerged peat for palaeo-environmental and archaeological evidence will hopefully happen this coming summer.

Possible wave cut rocky shoreline at -13 to -15m depth west of Ballycastle (bathymetric data collected by the JIBS project, terrestrial aerial photo and DEM courtesy of LPS)

2) How did you become interested in this particular problem?

I've been interested in submerged landscapes since my undergrad days. What first piqued my interest was the colonization of the Americas involving the now submerged Beringian landbridge and the possible coastal route down the western coast of the US and Canada. Consequently, I went to Southampton University to do a masters and then PhD focusing on maritime archaeology and submerged landscapes. Most of my research since has therefore had some sort of a submerged landscapes component. The reason for looking at the north of Ireland is a little more pragmatic. Firstly, I got a job there (at the Centre for Maritime Archaeology, University of Ulster) and secondly, a very large quantity of seabed mapping data for the Irish coast was made available, giving archaeologists a chance to actually visualize the seabed in unprecedented detail.


3) Has your project changed since you originally began working on it? How?

Some of the intertidal lithics collected from Eleven Ballyboes

There have definitely been changes. When we started, it was intended that we would follow a nice 7 stage methodology devised by Trevor Bell at the MUN Geography Department. This essentially aimed to collect data on the seabed and sub-seabed, use this to create a detailed palaeo-landscape reconstruction and then apply predictive modelling of archaeological site locations to target ground-truth surveys. However, once we got going, we found that while the individual stages were great, sticking to a rigid structure was actually quite difficult, since some stages relied on data which was not available at the time, while we could make a head start on other stages where data was available. A good example of this is our work on the Eleven Ballyboes site – we targeted the site because it had lithics which appeared to be washing ashore and were therefore able to skip the predictive modelling stage.

This type of research is also massively interdisciplinary and really dependent on help from colleagues (most notably Ruth Plets, Rory Quinn and Peter Woodman, but also with help from individuals too numerous to mention). Dive surveys also require a team (thanks to Rory McNeary, Wes Forsythe, Colin Breen and the NERC Facility for Scientific Diving) and often boat support. It’s often the nature of research projects that people move on, get involved with other research projects or take on new jobs. For example, I personally had to put aspects of it on hold while I undertook research on the impact of coastal erosion on behalf of the Northern Ireland government heritage agency. Between this and my colleagues’ other commitments, the project has moved from a full time exercise to something a little more ad hoc, which is a shame, but is sometimes the reality of research.


4) If you had a time machine and could present your research to the people who lived at your site(s) – what would you hope their response would be?

Intertidal test pitting at Eleven Ballyboes  (or how many 

archaeologists does it take to dig a 1 x1…) 

(photo taken by Rory McNeary)

I’d hope that they’d be interested in how much the landscape was changing because of sea-level rise. It’d be really interesting to know the extent to which they actually perceived the change in sea-level and whether they thought it was a good or bad thing. Also, I would hope that they would then tell me where they’ve left all their coolest stuff.


5) Has your research taught you anything about yourself? What? 

That persistence pays off, and that you never know as much as you think - there’s always something more to learn.

Diver sampling the Portrush peat layer (buried under 

the sand) with a small hand core

6) I can’t imagine doing this research without...

Dive gear obviously and lots of lovely geophysical data.


7) How do you unwind when you need to get away from your research?

Beer, televised sport and Call of Duty on the Nintendo Wii (though not necessarily in that order).


8) Do you have any advice for students just starting out in Archaeology?

Archaeology is a tough field to stay in – take every opportunity you get to build up different skills and experience. You never know which might come in handy.

Sample of fresh lithics from underwater
versus water-rolled ones from the
intertidal beach. The fresh ones tend
to be grey or blue-grey, while the
rolled ones are patinated yellow, red,
orange or light grey.

9) What books or websites would you recommend if people want to learn more about your area of interest in general? Or your project in particular?

Our project has its own (infrequently updated) blog: Submergedlandscapes. This has lots more information on the project and the sites I mentioned earlier. More widely, SPLASH-COS (Submerged Prehistoric Landscapes and Archaeology of the Continental Shelf) is a Europe-wide networking project. There’s a webpage (http://www.splashcos.org/ ) and a Facebook Page . These have links to other projects including ongoing research and meetings. For the books – go for the recent volume Submerged Prehistory by Jonathan Benjamin et al. (2011). This is an edited volume with research papers from across the world. It’s a really nice introduction which showcases the breadth of current research in the field.

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Do you have research that you'd like to share with other arcaheologists or do you know a student or colleague whose work should be highlighted?  Send me an e-mail: elfshot.tim@gmail.com

Photo Credits: 

Kieran Westley, unless otherwise noted in the captions.
Plans and Profiles Banner, Tim Rast based on a linocut by Lori White