Popular media, from computer games to movies, often portrays medieval life as being
dominated by fighters and farmers. In these depictions, there’s little evidence of a world beyond political struggle and simple subsistence.
Leisure activities are often overlooked, despite the fact that they existed in one form or another at most – if not all – levels of medieval society. The intangible nature of much of the evidence, often coupled with poor preservation of physical objects, can help explain this.
However, when conditions are right, archaeological remains can shed light on the extra-curricular activities of medieval folk. My colleagues and I found abundant evidence of life’s luxuries at the site of Caherconnell Cashel in the Burren region of western Ireland.
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Caherconnell Cashel was a farmstead of houses and workshops enclosed within a well-preserved circular dry stone wall. Such settlements are also known as ringforts and generally housed a single family (possibly multiple generations). Caherconnell was a large ringfort; the home of wealthy local rulers from the late 10th century AD to the early 17th century. Our recently concluded excavations revealed all aspects of life at this well-preserved family settlement.
While activities such as fighting, farming, industry and crafts were clearly represented in material recovered from the site, so too were the less mundane activities of game playing, literacy, and music.
Games, pens and harps
The true extent of game playing is undoubtedly lost in the perishable nature of the
materials used extensively in such pursuits – such as wood, leather and textiles. At Caherconnell, however, surviving evidence includes small gaming pieces made of
bone and antler, metal, clay and stone.
One of the more complete finds was an 11th-century barrel-shaped and polished antler gaming piece. A bronze peg or stem runs through its hollow core and projects from its base. It originally had a plate or cap at the top, the loss of which may have resulted in the piece being discarded or set aside for repair.
Paul Naessens
Pegged game pieces like this were used in the Saxon and Viking board game of hnefatafl, a game that appeared in Ireland around the 9th or 10th century AD. Hnefatafl, and other games like it, provided both strategy training and entertainment.
Evidence of literacy at Caherconnell includes writing implements and associated
equipment. One of our most remarkable finds was an 11th-century pen made from
bone and bronze. The slender hollow bone shaft or barrel was probably made from the bone of a wader bird or swan.
Experimental work by the archaeologist Adam Parsons found that the closest match was a swan radius (a tubular bone) from the right-side wing. Inserted into the narrow end of the barrel is a tapering bronze point or nib.
Noel McCarthy
The Caherconnell pen finds no exact comparisons within Ireland or elsewhere; its early secular context is also, so far, unique. Until now, evidence of early literacy in Ireland has been largely confined to monastic and related church sites. At Caherconnell, the pen may have been used in general record keeping and external communications.
However, it also reminds us that literate occupants of Caherconnell Cashel may have enjoyed composing, reading, and sharing ancestral pedigrees, praise poetry and epic tales “of gods and fighting men”.
The musical sounds of a settlement are rarely represented in its archaeological
record. Wood, a common material in the construction of various instruments, rarely
survives to the present day.
Michelle Comber
Metal and bone fittings, however, have been found during excavations, including at Caherconnell, where bone and bronze tuning pegs were among the finds. Two of the tuning pegs are readily identifiable as components of stringed instruments.
They have a circular sectioned shaft that splays slightly into a rectangular sectioned turning block at one end (now missing from the larger bone example). The opposite end pinches in slightly and is perforated by a small circular hole through which the string was attached.
The bone tuning peg, being a relatively soft material, still bears impressions from the wire-string of the instrument. Both date to the 11th century, but they are clearly from different instruments.
Michelle Comber
One had strong bronze pegs, the other had larger bone versions. Outside Ireland, shorter tuning pegs are commonly associated with lyres, lutes and fiddles (up to 65mm is classed as short).
No lutes or fiddles survive from early Ireland, however. Nor are there any
written references to, or depictions of them. The lyre, on the other hand, is
represented. Depictions are found in several ecclesiastical contexts and early Irish literature confirms that lyres or lyre-like instruments were also used outside religious settings.
Noel McCarthy
Music, and accompanying songs and poetry, probably fulfilled various social, political, and cultural functions. These range from proclaiming the magnificence of the nobility to entertaining a family around their hearth in the evening.
Life at Caherconnell was, in many ways, very traditional. It was a place where ancestry and heritage were valued, yet it was also a place connected to the outside world. In leisure, as in so many other facets of their lives, the occupants encountered, adopted, and no doubt adapted the most desirable elements of a wider cultural realm.
It is clear from this one site that those with more leisure time, often the wealthier in society, filled that time with various recreational pursuits. However, human nature suggests that all classes engaged in such activities, albeit often in a manner that’s less visible to archaeologists.
After all, you didn’t need a fancy bronze and antler game set to play games, writing equipment to create stories, or peg-tuned wired instruments to compose and sing a song. Such things just prove the existence of these activities, not how commonplace they were.
