Archaeology University College Cork

194 WOODSTOWN: A VIKING-AGE SETTLEMENT IN CO. WATERFORD 7· 5 SILVER John Sheehan Introduction Forty-two items of Viking-Age silver have been found at Woodstown, Co. Waterford, mostly in hack-silver form. Of these, forty were recovered from the site's removed topsoil layers, either through metal detecting or, to a much lesser extent, by dry sieving. Preliminary analysis of the very large number of topsoil finds indicated an extensive disturbance of this material, resulting from ploughing within the site's soil mantle since its use, with little evidence to relate the artefacts to one another or to underlying features (O'Brien et al. 2005, 66-y). The remaining two finds were conventionally excavated, from stratified deposits, but were not associated with each other. The scattered nature of the silver on the site indicates that it was randomly lost, piece by piece, probably during the circulation of currency in the course of trade. The Woodstown collection, therefore, must be regarded as an 'assemblage' rather than a hoard, and as such it represents the first find of a significant number of individual silver items from a Scandinavian settlement site in Ireland. Given that only a small area of the site was archaeologically investigated, it is likely that this material represents only a moderate proportion of the original amount of silver that circulated and came to be lost there. The obvious comparanda for the items that make up the Woodstown material, which are predominantly ingots and ingot-derived hack-silver, lie in Ireland's silver hoards. However, the question of whether there actually is a meaningful and direct correspondence between the Woodstown assemblage and the phenomena represented by Ireland's hoards is debatable. Many of the hoards represent wealth, including the display and storage of it in the form of complete ornaments, while the assemblage of hack-silver from this site represents the use of wealth as currency. Discoveries made over the past decade or so in Scandinavia, Britain and, now, Ireland, suggest that, apart from single finds, there are two main distinct classes of contexts for Viking-Age silver - hoards and assemblages from settlement finds. Unfortunately, there is, as yet, no equivalent for the Woodstown silver assemblage from Viking-Age Dublin or, indeed, from elsewhere in Ireland (though the results from the recent commencement of work on the Linn Duachaill longphort, Co. Louth, seem promising in this regard). However, there are comparable assemblages from elsewhere in the Viking world, most notably from the central places at Kaupang, Vestfold, Norway (Hardh 2008), and Uppakra, Skane, Sweden (Hardh 2ooo), as well as from the winter camp established by the Danish 'great army' at Torksey, Lincolnshire, in 872-3 (Blackburn 20 I I). In each of these cases, it appears that the finds represent random losses from the pools of silver that circulated in these settlements. As was the case at Woodstown, most of the silver at these sites occurs in the form of hack-silver and is often highly fragmented, and, significantly, all of the sites have also produced impressive quantities of balance-scale weights. The Woodstown silver collection comprises two complete ingots, eleven hack-silver ingot terminals, thirteen further hack-silver ingot fragments, six hack-silver fragments of arm-rings, with two different forms represented, a hack-silver fragment of sheet, a brooch fragment, possibly hack-silver, a weight, a rod fragment and six pieces of casting waste (fig. 7. 54). In addition, the site has produced an iron rod fragment, striated and with silver inlay. Although this may not be classified as a silver/hack-silver item, it is included here for METAL 195 Figure 7.54 (Above) Selection of silver assemblage recovered from Woodstown. L. of longest complete ingot 60.9mm. Figure 7.55 (Right) Ingot from metalworking furnace 02E0441 :2367:3. L. 31.9mm (photograph: Studio lab). convenience. With two exceptions, all of the above were retrieved from topsoil and were therefore out of their primary archaeological contexts. Of the two finds from stratified deposits, the first derived from a post-medieval field bank (O'Brien et al. 2005, 63), clearly not its original context (o2E0441:1999:3 1) , while the second, a complete ingot (fig. 7· 55), derives from a fill within an apparent furnace (o2E0441:2367=3). This furnace, which was predominantly used for iron production, is of interest as preliminary analysis indicated that it also produced evidence of small scale, non-ferrous metalworking, including both of copper alloy and of silver (ch. 6). The finds from this feature include a lead balance-scale weight as well as the silver ingot (ch. 4.1), an association that would not be unexpected in an ingot-production context, as well as sherds of cupels/'heating-trays'. Cupel sherds were also recovered from other areas of the site (ch. 8.rc). It has been suggested that cupels, which were used in the assaying and refining of silver in several other contexts in Viking-Age Scandinavia, as well as in Hiberno- WOODSTOWN: A VIKING-AGE SETTLEMENT IN CO. WATERFORD Scandinavian Dublin, functioned as an element in the control of the production and use of silver as a means of payment, in the same way as balance-scales and weights did (Soderberg 2004, 122-3). Indeed, Young's analyses of several of the Woodstown cupels demonstrate that they were used in silver assaying, and that some crucibles were used for melting silver. To date, consideration of the Woodstown furnace and its associated material indicates the possibility of on-site silver-smelting, and the possible production of ingots. However, while the silver finds from the site also include a number of pieces of casting waste, this material does not in itself necessarily represent on-site silverworking. This is so because casting waste also occurs in a number of hoards from Britain and Ireland (below), indicating that it formed part of the broad pool of silver that was circulating in the Irish Sea area during the Viking Age. Nevertheless, despite this reservation, silver smithing and artefact production at Woodstown may seem a plausible possibility within the overall archaeological context of the site. If this is the case, then the first archaeologically attested evidence for Scandinavian silverworking in Ireland potentially emerges from Woodstown, even though it is accepted that Viking-Age Dublin was a more important silverworking centre. Each item of silver from the Woodstown assemblage is identified and described below. A discussion of each object-type is presented in terms of its cultural attribution and date. An overview of the material is presented within the context of related assemblages from the Scandinavian world and, finally, the potential connections of the Woodstown silver with Viking-Age hoards from early medieval Munster are explored. The Woodstown assemblage Ingots and ingot hack-silver Ingots and ingot-derived hack-silver dominate the Woodstown silver, accounting for twenty six of the forty-two silver items from the site. The ingots and related hack-silver are of the standard Viking-Age type- oblong bar-shaped, usually of plano-convex, trapezoidal or sub rectangular cross-section, most often with rounded terminals - and, as such, they do not exhibit any diagnostic features that could be of use in defining their period of currency. Ingots form a significant element of Viking-Age hoards throughout the Viking world, and functioned primarily as a simple means of storing bullion. They occur, in either complete or hack-silver form, in at least half of the eighty recorded pre-ADrooo silver hoards from Ireland that contain non-numismatic material. Sixteen of these finds also contain coins and thus their deposition dates may be determined, generally to within a short timespan. All of these are of tenth-century date, though the large number of ingots and ingot-derived hack silver in the Cuerdale hoard, Lancashire, deposited c.905-10 and possibly originating in large part in Hiberno-Scandinavian Dublin (Graham-Campbell 1987, 332- 6),9 serve to illustrate that ingots must also have been in circulation in Ireland during the last decades of the ninth century. Other evidence, including the unusual nature of ingots in a small number of hoards from Ireland that are ornamented with cruciform motifs that only find parallel in the Cuerdale find, suggests that ingots were more common in later ninth-century Ireland than the evidence of the coin-dated hoards alone indicates. It is also relevant to note in this regard that ingots or ingot-derived hack-silver occur in association with ornaments in fifteen non-coin dated hoards from Ireland, in most cases with Hiberno-Scandinavian broad-band arm-rings, a type that developed during the later ninth century, perhaps c.88o, and continued in general circulation until c.930 (Sheehan 201 r, 99-100). 9 For an alternative view, see Williams 201 r, 70-r. METAL 197 In short, therefore, the overall evidence indicates that ingots were more common in later ninth-century Ireland than the evidence of the coin-dated hoards alone indicates, and that they formed a regular element of Ireland's tenth-century hoards. On the basis of this evidence, the ingots and ingot-derived hack-silver, which forms the bulk of the Woodstown silver material, could date to anywhere between the mid-ninth and the end of the tenth century. One of the two silver finds from a stratified context at Woodstown- an ingot (fig. 7. 55) -was recovered from a fill within what was identified as a smithing hearth within the ditch of Enclosure One. A radiocarbon date of AD420-620 was obtained from a sample of oak charcoal from one of the hearth's fills, which was stratigraphically lower than the fill from which the ingot was derived (ch.

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