Irish museum solves mystery of Bronze Age axe heads delivered in porridge box

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jul/25/irish-museum-solves-mystery-of-bronze-age-axe-heads-delivered-in-porridge-box

by speckx • 2 years ago

91 84 2 years ago

theguardian.com

scotty793• 2 years ago

“crucial to know the exact location where they were found” for “reasons that could range from ritualistic to supernatural”

I wonder what they implied there.

Loughla2• 2 years ago

I had the same question. Anyone from Ireland here that might have any idea at all what that's about?

darby_nine2• 2 years ago

Idk about this specific thing, but this is much simpler than it sounds if it operates like other anthropology. Ritualistic means intentional, and supernatural means symbolically meaningful. In other words, this is less of a specific claim and more of an "idk but they were clearly up to something".

throwup238• 2 years ago

Just that the discovery was missing something called context in archaeology. Where they were found geographically, the stratigraphy such as the dirt it was found in and the layers around it, where it was found in relation to the nearest settlement, what kinds of animal bones were found in the same general area, and so on. Archaeologists are meticulous about recording these little details because every any one of them could become important to the investigation.

An artifact on its own is (relatively) scientifically useless. Without at least geographic location and a rough idea of the area it was discovered, most analytical methods will have a hard time getting accurate results and any conclusions are suspect.

scotty793• 2 years ago

What would be a supernatural reason then? Is there some context in archeology that is labeled as supernatural that's different from ritualistic context? And what other things lie in the range between those two?

secondcoming2• 2 years ago

Flahavans makes excellent porridge

mandmandam4• 2 years ago

First off, Flahavans are from Waterford and this find was in Westmeath.

Second, if you want the actual best porridge get yourself some Kilbeggan (which are actually from Westmeath, funnily enough).

lifeisstillgood• 2 years ago

HN has a wonderful reputation for always finding an unexpected expert to comment - from nuclear physics to philosophy, pre-history to … porridge :-)

But we have buried the lede - Flahavens or not, is it water and salt, or is it milk?

VagabundoP3• 2 years ago

I’ll fight you on behalf of Flahavans. Meet me.

Porridge is serious business.

ivankelly2• 2 years ago

The farmer is from Westmeath. The find was in banagher in co Offaly

ivankelly2• 2 years ago

The oats in clonakilty puddings are all flahavans too

A_D_E_P_T• 2 years ago

It is against the law in Ireland to search for archaeological objects using a metal detector unless written permission has been given. Penalties can be up to three months in prison or a fine of up to €63,486 (£53,435).

Written permission from who? He was on his own farmland. You have to write a plea to the government to request permission to use a metal detector on your own land? And, if that's the case, are such requests usually granted? What's the rationale here, and what harms does this permission-first system aim to prevent?

It is understood, however, that Dunne will not face charges.

If it's a bad law that they're making a point of not enforcing, why not repeal the law?

So many questions.

colmmacc• 2 years ago

The rationale is that while you may own the land, you don't own the artifacts, and the state has an interest in ensuring that history is recorded and preserved professionally. In effect, archeology is a licensed occupation, but then so is cutting hair in most US states.

If the story about metal in machinery is true, then really no offense was committed. Using a metal detector to find what you think is a loose horseshoe is fine. The story might also just be a convenient cover, but no-one will really care. In Ireland, authorities tend to be good natured and mostly only out to get egregious offenders. Maybe the metal detector guy has been looking for coins without permission, and it'll be handled at the level of "ah here would you have a bit of cop on".

cwillu• 2 years ago

“In effect, archeology is a licensed occupation, but then so is cutting hair in most US states.”

This doesn't strengthen the argument.

ddingus• 2 years ago

The rationale is that while you may own the land, you don't own the artifacts[...]

At first I bristled a little, but given a pause to think it through, it makes great sense!

Fact is, we as a species did not advance quickly enough to record our origins and a lot of our history. Perhaps this kind of thing always happens. Nobody knows and we have a sample size of one at present.

Our history is a shared thing by our very human condition and the nature of history.

Of course we benefit overall with policy like this even if at times a few of us feel wronged.

profsummergig2• 2 years ago

So much will never be found thanks to this law.

p1necone• 2 years ago

Random amateurs digging stuff up is next to useless from an archaeological perspective - once you've disturbed the earth and taken stuff out of the ground you've already destroyed so much contextual information.

Even professional trained archaeologists intentionally only excavate parts of sites when they know there's more to find because we expect there to be much better technology in the future.

Amateurs digging for artifacts are destroying knowledge, not discovering it.

esperent• 2 years ago

So much will never be looted or destroyed because of this law. As an Irish person who has spent some time working as an archaeological grunt (basically, I dig then as soon as I spot something, pass it over to a real archaeologist) - this is a hugely important law. Because, for large developers, the immediate response on finding something is to hide/destroy it so that they don't lose money while an archaeological survey is carried out. And for landowners, I wager a majority are likely to keep it as a curio if it doesn't look valuable.

The fact is that owning a piece of farmland doesn't give you ownership of our country's heritage. Nor should it. You get to raise cows on the land. You don't get to mine it (without permission), you don't get to turn it into a housing development (without permission), and you don't get to turn it into an archaeological dig site (without permission).

tsimionescu2• 2 years ago

Generally, the later we excavate something, the greater the amount of historical information we'll be able to get from that excavation.

Of course, this has to be balanced with some amount of excavation to actually improve those methods, and with enough information being gleaned today to keep us interested in actually funding the practice of archaeology for tomorrow.

avianlyric• 2 years ago

From the end of the article:

The NMI also wishes to remind the public that unregulated use of detection devices causes serious damage to Ireland’s archaeological heritage.

If you want to know more, the NMI have a detailed article explaining the rationale

https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/The-Law-on-...

AlotOfReading4• 2 years ago

These laws are a balancing act between heritage conservation and civil rights like allowing people to enjoy metal detecting as a hobby. Without these laws and effective enforcement of them, looters show up with bulldozers, metal detectors, and work crews in the middle of the night to dig up anything they can sell to what's now a billion dollar global market. I've spent a lot of time as an archaeologist looking at the aftermath and doing public education to stop it.

Antiquities laws are generally designed to make antiquities "visible" to the state while also giving authorities teeth if they need to go after these sorts of people. To do that, there's a whole host of laws and conventions that require reporting virtually everything and align the financial incentives/penalties to ensure valuations on any antiquities discovered are as reasonably accurate as possible. It makes things a little inconvenient for the hobbyists, but I personally find that a reasonable tradeoff given the damage that otherwise occurs.

gadders3• 2 years ago

>These laws are a balancing act between heritage conservation and civil rights like allowing people to enjoy metal detecting as a hobby. Without these laws and effective enforcement of them, looters show up with bulldozers, metal detectors, and work crews in the middle of the night to dig up anything they can sell to what's now a billion dollar global market. I've spent a lot of time as an archaeologist looking at the aftermath and doing public education to stop it.

That doesn't seem to happen in England, which allows metal detecting.

vivekd• 2 years ago

It seems to me that the evil of having haphazard laws that are enforced arbitrarily on discretion is worse than the evil of heritage loss. This solution is much worse than the cure. Yes it's hard for governments to write narrowly tailored laws to achieve narrowly tailored objectives while avoiding loopholes. That doesn't mean they should devolve into making overly broad laws and then enforcing those laws arbitrarily. That's just behaving like a tyrant.

fsckboy• 2 years ago

You have to write a plea to the government to request permission to use a metal detector on your own land?

no, that's not the law (because you changed what you quoted). the law is "you can't use a metal detector on your own property to search for archaeological objects without permission." You can use it as this farmer said he did as part of working your farm, although if you do find an archeological object I think you are required to leave it in place which he did not do.

There are other restrictions concerning public lands and registered sites of some description.

TheRealPomax• 2 years ago

There is no "his own farmland". All land in Ireland is owned by Ireland. You don't magically become a sovereign of your own plot just because you have a title deed, Ireland still ultimately owns that land. You're just granted most of the rights relating to use of that land. But not all rights. And archeological finds fall in the "not all rights" category.

antonvs• 2 years ago

your own land

Your assumptions about what this means are parochial. Think a bit deeper about what ownership really means in this context.

DoubleGlazing• 2 years ago

In the early 80s a couple of lads found the Derrynaflan hoarde. A collection of stunning religious artefacts dating from the 9th century.

This resulted in a whole legal mess where they were demanding a payment from the state of what would be arounf €25 million in todays money, after months of legal arguing they got a payout of what would be around €200k today. While this was ongoing there was an explosion in the number of people going out metal detecting for similar items and it's almost certain some items were found and not delcared to the state.

So to protect the nations heritage - and we have a lot of it - from being scavenged these strict laws were introduced.

ahmedfromtunis• 2 years ago

Parsing the title I thought it was going to be about an Irish museum that solved the mystery of bronze age collapse.

My excitement grew exponentially as the words went by, until it crashed at once.

Hopefully though the secrets of that collapse would be unveiled in the coming years.

23B1• 2 years ago

I hope this works out for this guy, because these days I have zero faith that W. European governments are run by sane, commonsense people.

Aeolun• 2 years ago

While I sort of agree with you, I also feel like they’re often still better than elsewhere.

The basis is so solid that even the insane people are still closer to reasonsble than elsewhere.

wileydragonfly• 2 years ago

“We’d rather it rotted away to dust versus you digging it up.”

Good grief.

blahedo• 2 years ago

They've survived since the bronze age. They're not rotting away to dust any time soon.

mcmoor• 2 years ago

What I thought when the British claimed they can stole things because they preserved it better. This thing have preserved in this land for centuries, and who's to say that British Museum won't get nuked in the next 100 years?

fph• 2 years ago

I think the point is "We'd rather you left them where they were after you found them and notified a museum, so that they could be dug out with all due care by professional archeologists".

pvaldes• 2 years ago

Or as alternative title: "Finder explained all, Irish museum did nothing".

bell-cot• 2 years ago

THIS. Yes, I understand why HN wants to discourage "editorial" titles from submitters. OTOH, less-bad web sites often put the actual sober facts in the subtitles - as was done here. Maybe if HN allowed submitters to use those instead, when the title is just click-bait?

Irish museum solves mystery of Bronze Age axe heads delivered in porridge box

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