History of the Papacy Podcast

Episode 117k Digging Deep into Celtic Christianity Through Archaeology

Description: Today we continue our journey through Celtic Christianity with Dr. Carly McNamara. This time we are going to continue talking about Dr. McNamara’s personal study of archaeology at the Isle of Lismore in Scotland. We get into some of the more problematic and fun aspects of archaeology.

About Today’s Guest:
Dr. Carolyn McNamara
On Twitter: @MedievalCarly
Education Evolved: @EducationEvolvd www.educationevolvedltd.com/
Lismore Gaelic Heritage Centre - www.facebook.com/IsleofLismoreGaelicHeritageCentre
www.lismoregaelicheritagecentre.org/

Argyll Archaeology - www.facebook.com/argyllarchaeology
www.argyll-archaeology.co.uk/

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Music Provided by:
"Danse Macabre" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Virtutes Instrumenti" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Crusades" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Funeral March for Brass" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"String Impromptu Number 1" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Intended Force" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Agnus Dei X - Bitter Suite Kevin MacLeaod (incomptech.com)
"Folk Round" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Celtic Impulse" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Image Credits:
By Ariely - Own work, CC BY 3.0, ttps://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4533576
By Pam Brophy, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9124089
By ACBahn - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33810833
By Alan Partridge, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=478777

Begin Transcript:
Thank you for listening to the History of the Papacy. I am your host Steve and we are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network, including Scott Rank’s History Unplugged, James Early’s Key Battles of American History, Richard Lim’s This American President and Josh Cohen’s Eyewitness History. Go to parthenon podcast dot com to learn more.
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oReaching the ultimate power and prestige, that of the See of Rome: we have Peter the Great!
•Today we continue our journey through Celtic Christianity with Dr. Carly McNamara. This time we are going to continue talking about Dr. McNamara’s personal study of archaeology at the Isle of Lismore in Scotland. We get into some of the more problematic and fun aspects of archaeology. Hint, Indiana Jones is problematic.
•With that, here is the next piece of the mosaic of the history of the Popes of Rome and Christian Church.
[00:00:00] That's really interesting because it adds something, like you said, that there was a possibility of something being a bronze age and that's something who would write about that. If you're just setting up a monastery there and there's a house that was maybe there and it was super old, or maybe it wasn't, they wouldn't maybe even known it was there.
It had already been buried. So that's something that would just never come across and attacks. Right. And even. Um, Bronx and doing that exist on the island, that likely would have had people living in them at the time that would have come over. And, you know, that's not mentioned in the text at all, and we don't technically even get a mention of the founding of the church.
We just have to presume it happened before Miller died in 5 92. And so, um, Some of these items help you and help, uh, others experts learn a little bit more about the site. Yeah. So the structures can help us [00:01:00] understand a site because we, we know that there are typical kinds of houses or structures that are built, uh, Are looking at the vallum around a church, which is, it's not quite a wall, it's usually a ditch, but it kind of delineates the, the monastery of the church's space from the general secular space.
And based on the shape of the vallum can give us a little bit of information about maybe who built that church or who built that original structure, the designs, or even the type of pottery, like it's shaped. Composition can tell us if they were trading with someone in this pottery has come from somewhere else.
You know, we know that there were Roman and for I, and such that were being traded into the north of Britain during Roman times. And so we can find out more about, you know, who is trading with who or who's making, what we can find. Information, um, from the animal bones heal, do they [00:02:00] show signs of being butchered?
So are these animals that were being eaten or is it more likely that this was just somebody's old horse who died out in the field and they maybe just kind of covered it up and buried it? So there's a lot of information and even say in the shroud pen, the decoration that exists on that shroud pen, they can compare with other shroud pins that have been found elsewhere and kind of see.
Where that fits in and that can help us understand more about the site and its people. Can you tell us a little bit more about the human graves and some of the human remains that were found? Right. So, as I said, they had their, uh, their human remains specialist. And so she was able to. To know much more than I would ever know.
I'm not sure. I would even really recognize a human bone from an animal bone. If you put them in front of me and didn't tell me there was one of each. So, um, she said that they did [00:03:00] find as expected adults being buried. They did find some juveniles or younger people. And then also some infants and some were in.
Yeah, what we might consider a proper grave. Like this was their original burial place. They were intended to be put in like this, in this place. And some that were what's referred to as disturbed. So there were probably moved from somewhere else or some other method of having disturbed those remains. But, uh, as far as.
Close details on that. I wait anxiously for the final dig report, which I'm really looking forward to reading when they, um, on earth human remains, what did they do with them afterwards? A lot of that depends on. The community that it's found in the place that's found in and the culture surrounding that and, you know, the connection that those people might have [00:04:00] to the living communities.
So in north America, the U S specifically, there is a law it's called NAGPRA, which is the north American graves repatriation act. And because the. The indigenous peoples and the various cultures that exist in north America still have very close cultural, religious, and familial ties to these early people today.
Now it wasn't always this way. There's a requirement that those remains be returned to. Culture. So that way they can be appropriately reentered, uh, previous to the existence of laws like that most bones would just be put into a collection and put into storage in a museum. So you'll see sometimes in the news stories of the reentering of remains that were gathered for archeological purposes and other times.
Those remains to go into museums. Yeah, it's [00:05:00] really interesting because I was just talking to somebody else about Billy, the kid's bones, and this is kind of completely unrelated, but people wanted to, uh, disinter him and his mom and like three other people to try and prove some point of who, um, if somebody else was an imposter or actually Billy the kid.
And I was thinking to myself, that seems like a lot. Disruption of the burial goods or, you know, buried people just for a curiosity. And it seems like that could be a very fine line and archeology of, yeah. You really want to find something and, but these are real people too. Yeah. And there's definitely.
Respect that's shown to any human remains that are found no matter how old they are. You know, there's always this recognition, like these are actual people that lived, whether it's a baby that didn't live that long, or whether it's a 80 year old person. [00:06:00] You know, you found the remains in the ground. So you all archeologists always want to treat them with respect and be sensitive to the fact that these were real living people that existed.
Now, what was it like to be on a, on an actual archeological dig? Because it's kind of something like half between a construction site and a scientific laboratory. What was it like actually being on this dig and, yeah, it was lots of fun. It was lots of hard work. Yeah, we spent every day that I was there. I was there for six days.

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