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Press Releasesback to main Press Release section September 2005 17th September 2005 - New Season
of Woodstwon Lectures to Focus on Opportuni for Waterford Communities
New Season Of Woodstown Lectures to Focus on Opportunities for Waterford Communities The first of the new season’s Woodstown lectures will be held on 29th September at 8 o’clock on the Granville Hotel. Building on the success of the Tall Ships, the subject of the lecture is: “The Déise Navy: ships and shipbuilding in Waterford from Brian Boru to Strongbow”. The lecturer is Dr Catherine Swift, chairman of the Save Viking Waterford Action Group. She explains: “There was extensive evidence for ship nails found at Woodstown in 2004 and wood-working tools have now also been identified from the site. Experts at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde in Denmark are examining these to determine the type of ships were being built and maintained at Woodstown. However we also have extensive documentary evidence for ships and shipbuilding in the area. Viking fleets were sailing on the Suir from the ninth century and from the era of Brian Boru, the Irish high-kings would hire Waterford ships captains to run their navy. The building of those ships represented an enormous community effort: it took 2,650 man days to build each of the great warships and it is thought that weaving the cloth to make the ships’ sails took the women almost as long.” “This is the first of this season of Woodstown lectures which are designed to focus on the question of how we can best exploit the riches of Woodstown for the benefit of everybody in Waterford and the south-east. This summer, Minister Roche has declared Woodstown to be a National Monument and 53% of the site is in public ownership, controlled by Waterford City Council. So the site is a public resource and must be developed as such for the benefit of all.” “The City Development Plan argues for the
development of tourist infrastructures along the banks of the
river and Minister Cullen stated that the North Quay developments
would include provision for cultural foci and museums. Perhaps
“The Goodbody report has recently argued
that W.I.T. should be upgraded to university status and that that
would bring jobs and development into the south- east. Development
plans for the Carraiganore campus, immediately beside Woodstown
are currently being exhibited to the public. Since the initial
phases comprise sports fields and car parks, there is time available
to develop proposals for a research centre, devoted to scientific
archaeological techniques. This would “It is vital that, as a community, we discuss
these issues, develop proposals which best suit our needs and
articulate these publicly. Otherwise the riches of Woodstown will
be left abandoned and the public land will lie waste, whilst 05 September 2005 SVWAG Welcome Release of New Information on Woodstown The Save Viking Waterford Action Group has welcomed the release of new information on the Woodstown Viking site, which was made at the Viking Congress recently. The XVth Viking Congress; made up of scholars from Denmark, England, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Sweden and Wales spent a day in Waterford recently, visiting the site of Woodstown and hearing a presentation by the senior NRA archaeologist, Ms Dáire O’Rourke. As a result some new information has emerged into the public eye, including the first information on the geophysical survey of the site. This has shown extensive activity within the large fort. This has been interpreted as an indication of structures and domestic settlement at the northern end of the site. Industrial activity, in contrast, seemed to be concentrated to the south, overlooking the boggy area, which produced hemp and cereal pollen. Dr Catherine Swift, spokesperson for S.V.W.A.G., "Some very interesting information emerged from this presentation and especially from the discussion afterwards. The belief that the fort was originally built by local Déise chieftains in the time of St Patrick, for example, seems now to be based entirely on radiocarbon dates from the 2004 excavations. Unfortunately, despite promises from the ACS, the company hired by the NRA to do the dig, there is still no sign of any report from those excavations, a full year after they were completed, and despite several promises from that company that publication was imminent. Specialists who had seen the material pointed out that, contradicting the radiocarbon evidence, there was a silver ingot of Viking style and a comb at the base of the ditch, which produced the early radiocarbon dates. So the fort may have been first built by the Vikings but, of course, we won’t know until we excavate." "It also emerged that there is extensive evidence for trading taking place at Woodstown. Silver processing was taking place on the site and the bulk of the silver objects are ingots, rather than chopped up brooch-pins or arm rings. Many of these ingots are chopped into small pieces, indicating that they have been exchanged for objects of relatively small value". "That’s also the evidence of the weights which the merchants used to weigh out the silver. There’s almost as many weights from the 5% of the site examined at Woodstown as from the forty years of excavations at Dublin. Fascinatingly, however, the Woodstown weights are much lighter than those in Dublin and are much closer to the type used at Kaupang, the trading centre from the south coast of Norway, which had extensive trading links with the Carolingian empire and the Baltic countries. Again, though, until we can excavate the site, we won’t be able to figure out what this indicates about the origins of the people who lived and worked at Woodstown". "We also think that ship building was taking place at Woodstown. Not only is there large number of ships nails but wood-working tools have now been identified amongst the 5000 artefacts which have come from the settlement. Unfortunately, these were almost entirely discovered from sieving and metal-detecting the soil which had been dislodged in the initial JCB trenching of the fort so we don’t know which part of the site they come from. All this information is very exciting but raise more questions than answers. ACS must publish all its findings immediately and the plans for the full excavation of the site must be drawn up now". For further information on the Save Viking Waterford Action Group, please contact save@vikingwaterford.com. Updates are available on the website www.vikingwaterford.com |