Platform - peatland, Edercloon, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Ritual/Ceremonial
Preserved beneath the surface of a Co. Longford bog, a small timber platform constructed sometime between the eighth and fourth centuries BC still retains the toolmarks left by its makers.
The wood, held in the anaerobic embrace of the peat, survived in very good condition, and the cut marks visible on its timbers are evidence of metal tools, placing the structure firmly in the Irish Bronze or Iron Age. That level of preservation, from a structure measuring roughly five metres by four, is unusual enough, but what makes this particular find quietly compelling is the layered precision of its construction and what it reveals about how people moved through, and made use of, wetland landscapes.
The platform was built in two distinct layers, both oriented roughly northeast to southwest. The upper layer combined roundwood timbers, brushwood, and twigs laid up to three pieces deep, with the brushwood concentrated toward the southeast portion and a series of angled pegs driven in at the northeast and southwest ends. The lower layer followed a similar logic, with densely packed brushwood again concentrated to the southeast and more widely spaced roundwood toward the northwest, bound together with scattered twigs and held by nine pegs set at angles between 55 and 80 degrees. Occasional wood chips scattered through this lower layer suggest the timber was worked close to, or on, the site itself. Radiocarbon dating, reported by Moore and O'Connor, produced two date ranges: 750 to 700 cal BC and 540 to 390 cal BC, indicating either a long period of use or more than one phase of construction. The platform sat just one metre south of a togher, the Irish term for a wooden trackway laid across boggy ground to allow passage, and roughly 0.2 metres above a second platform beneath it, suggesting this part of the Edercloon bog was a place people returned to and rebuilt over generations.