Dunmore Cave

Unfortunately many of those remains discovered in the 18th–19th centuries have been lost to science, and possibly reburied elsewhere. However, there has been more recent work by Dr Marion Dowd who excavated in the cave in 2004. The analysis of the human remains from these excavations and the surviving material from earlier digs by Dr Lynda Lynch has identified around 50 individuals ranging from very small infants, children, juveniles and male and female adults.

What is really interesting about this detailed analysis of the human remains is that none of them show any signs of violence, which puts it at odds with the traditional story of a massacre. While a lack of evidence for trauma appears to cast doubt on the story of the Vikings brutally slaughtering those hiding in the cave, it does not discount that people may have suffocated due to fires, as in the second version of the tale. However no evidence of burning was found anywhere near the cave mouth, and the large complex size of the cave would keep the air circulating, casting doubt on this version of the story.

Despite these questions, the Viking association with Dunmore is undeniable. A large number of Viking-style artefacts have been found in the cave, mainly items of personal dress like beads, pins, bracelets and so on, perhaps worn by those whose skeletal remains were found here. So if it was a massacre of Irish people by the Vikings, why does so much of the artefactual assemblage suggest that it was the Viking themselves who were interred within the cave?

Rather than the scene of a massacre, it appears perhaps more likely that Dunmore Cave was a Viking burial place, a sacred space for loved ones to rest. This is paralleled by Cloghermore Cave in County Kerry, and shows that some Scandinavian communities in Ireland sought out caves to use for this purpose. Though it appears from the evidence that there was a variety of activity happening at Dunmore Cave.

Interestingly, two Viking hoards were found in Dunmore Cave. A small collection of coins were found in the part of the cave known as the Market Cross Chamber, they are believed to date to around AD 930, co-incidentally around the same year as the recorded Viking attack. A second hoard dated to AD 965 was found by one of the OPW guides in a crevice in the Town Hall Chamber, along with a garment of rare purple silk, and consisted of delicately woven silver wire cone-shaped buttons, 15 or so Anglo-Saxon coins and other decorative dress items with a silver ingot and copper alloy ingots.

Joanne O’Sullivan analysed the beads from Dunmore Cave, and identified them as being of very high status, and likely to have been imported along the Viking trade routes from Russia or Central Asia. It’s hard to know whether these costly depositions were ever intended to be retrieved, or whether they were some sort of offering to the chthonic gods of the underworld.

There is a suggestion that the Vikings used caves as a temporary hideouts during raiding seasons, with evidence of possibly plundered artefacts found at Kilgreany Cave in Waterford or Park North Cave in Cork, and there is further evidence from the Alice & Gwendoline Cave in Clare, and more again from Iceland. Perhaps this is a little like the famous story of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves who had their lair deep in a hidden cave. It is reasonable to consider at least the later deposition of high status objects here in Dunmore in such a light, but given the amount of human remains in the cave there is also the distinct possibility that these high value items may well have been grave goods.

Caves have not only been important throughout all of human history, but indeed even into earlier hominid species. From at least the Upper Palaeolithic Period onwards, people ventured to the deepest and darkest parts of caves, far beyond the light of the entrance, as a place of ritual and ceremony. At places like the Lascaux Caves stunning art was painted onto the contours and features of the cave to make the depictions of animals seem to come alive in the firelight.

In many cultures, caves and darkness are abodes of the dead or the gods, such as Hades in the Greek Myths. We have long told these stories of the underworld – one of humanity’s oldest surviving tales The Epic of Gilgamesh was first incised around 1800 BC, and tells the story of the Sumerian hero Enkidu who reappeared from a long imprisonment underground in the Netherworld. Similar journeys end as darkly for Orpheus, Hercules and Aeneas as they do for their counterparts in Finnish, Inuit, Aztec, Mayan and Hindu mythology. In Ireland, Oweynagat (Cave of the Cats) at Rathcroghan has strong associations with the Morrigan and the otherworld. When you cross the liminal space of the cave mouth, you cross into another plane, a true underworld. I highly recommend the excellent book The Archaeology of Darkness by Dr. Marion Dowd and Dr. Robert Hensey for a fascinating discussion of humanity’s interaction with caves and the darker places of the world. You can also hear Marion discuss Cave Archaeology on this episode of our Amplify Archaeology Podcast.