Transitions: Archaeology and Society
Irish society in the 1930s was, the Harvard academics believed, a society in transition between traditional and modern and, therefore, ideal for study. Irish archaeology itself was going through a transition from traditional antiquarianism to modern archaeology. The gradual professionalisation of archaeology in Ireland resulted in scientific archaeologists taking the place of antiquarians over the course of the 1920s and 1930s. There were still debates and controversies raging in the 1930s in Britain between ‘scientific archaeologists’ and ‘antiquarians’ and the question of who had the right to control interpretation of the past, a debate which had been ongoing there since the nineteenth century.7 Adolf Mahr and the Harvard archaeologists were central to the process of change in Ireland. Amateur archaeologists played a key role in showing the Americans around during their reconnaissance trip in 1931 and in sharing their unique knowledge about local areas. The Harvard archaeologists were seen as objectivists who would rescue Irish archaeology from the narrow parochialism and speculative mire of antiquarianism, and give it a global resonance.
During the 1930s the National Museum of Ireland used antiquarians who were described as having ‘archaeological leanings’ and ‘correspondents’ in various parts of the country as opposed to university- or museum-trained archaeologists. These amateurs or antiquarians were not qualified as archaeologists, but they acquired antiquities for the museum and helped in the discovery of new archaeological monuments and the protection of existing ones. Some of them even undertook excavations at the behest of Mahr. This was simply a pragmatic solution as the number of professionally trained archaeologists in the state was miniscule. Seán P. Ó Ríordáin pointed out, in 1931, ‘the great dearth of trained workers in archaeology in Ireland’, and ‘the lack of opportunities for their training’.8 In the 1930s and 1940s there was the gradual phasing out of the use of unqualified individuals to direct archaeological excavations. The more important sites were left to trained archaeologists and museum staff.
However, the public perception of both archaeologists and antiquarians was often negative in character. When Myles na gCopaleen wrote in his Irish Times column ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’ on 29 May 1942 about ‘Irish Iberian flint-snouted morons (c.6000 B.C.), who practised the queer inverted craft of devising posterity’s antiquities’, he was perhaps reflecting contemporary Irish society’s suspicion of archaeology and the ‘scholarly dirt-shovellers’ who practised it. Considering the fact that the Professor of Archaeology at UCC, Canon Patrick Power had the following to say about the discipline in 1925, this is hardly surprising: ‘For long Irish Archaeology had in fact been left to charlatans and dabblers, whence it acquired a rather dubious reputation which, to a certain extent, perhaps adheres to it still’.9 Eoin MacNeill noted that ‘the study of the prehistoric got a bad name, and deserved it’.10
Mahr was ambivalent in his attitude to antiquarians. He lamented the fact that many megalithic monuments in Ireland had been destroyed and ‘used as quarries’ and had served as ‘a happy hunting ground for members of field clubs and other people whom one can call only glorified stamp-collectors’.11 However, he continued to use those whom he regarded as having ‘archaeological leanings’. Trigger observed that antiquarians, did not employ a coherent methodology and ‘did little deliberate digging and had no sense of chronology’.12 This echoes Piggott’s view of antiquarians which was that they produced literary collections that included genealogical material, heraldic imagery and folk tales, along with occasional descriptions of artefacts.13 The collection’s focus of antiquarian pursuits during the nineteenth century and in the early decades of the twentieth century had also resulted in the damaging of archaeological monuments. This particularly affected the collection of ‘Celtic’ objects, usually associated with the La Tène Period of the Iron Age. Much of this material did not come from stratified contexts and it did not have a provenance.14
Brian Fagan described archaeology in nineteenth-century Ireland as being the preserve of the monied upper class, as ‘a gentleman’s pursuit, and often a country gentleman’s calling’.15 The transfer of power from an Anglo-Irish dilettante amateur elite to Irish Free State professional employees happened during the transition of Irish archaeology from a tool of colonialist endeavour to that of Free State nation-building. This gradual transition was reflected in the main personalities involved, from R.A.S Macalister, who served as Professor of Celtic Archaeology at UCD between the years 1909 to 1943, to S.P. Ó Riordáin who succeeded him, and their widely differing social and religious backgrounds. To many, Macalister was of the old school. Both he, and Harold G. Leask, were dubbed ‘ascendancy archaeologists’ by the archaeologist H.E. Kilbride Jones.16 Leask, the founder of the study of Irish medieval architecture, was the author of Irish Castles and Castellated Houses, published in 1941. There was a general lack of interest in this type of work as castles were seen as vestiges of colonial power and ‘an unwelcome guest at the academic feast in the new Irish state’.17 Indeed, Macalister had described medieval archaeology in 1928 as ‘a sad decline from the achievements of Celtic Ireland’.18 Not surprisingly, castles were not included in the research programme of the Harvard Mission. Before his appointment to UCD, Macalister, a Presbyterian of Scottish descent and son of Dublin-born Cambridge anatomist Alexander Macalister, had been Director of the Palestine Exploration Fund from 1900 to 1909. During this period he excavated at Tell el-Jazari, the biblical city of Gezer. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century he was regarded as the most distinguished archaeologist in Ireland. O’Sullivan describes Macalister, in his position as Professor of Celtic Archaeology at UCD, as ‘the pioneer whose interpretation of the role set an ambitious standard for those who followed’.19
Adolf Mahr: ‘The foremost archaeologist in the country’
After independence, the Irish Free State Government brought in expertise from abroad for leadership in important economic and cultural institutions. When the position of Keeper of Irish Antiquities became vacant in 1926, Macalister suggested himself for the post in a letter to William T. Cosgrave, President of the Executive Council.20 The government, however, awarded the position to the German Prehistorian Professor Walter Bremer of Marburg in 1926.21 Following the premature death of Bremer, the Irish Government advertised the position of Keeper of Irish Antiquities all over Europe in an effort to find a scholar of European reputation. Adolf Mahr, an Austrian archaeologist, applied for the position and his was one of the last of thirteen applications received. He was appointed Keeper of Irish Antiquities on 29 September 1927.
Macalister approved of Mahr’s appointment and in 1928 expressed the view that: ‘The authorities of the Free State Government showed to the world that they fully realised their responsibility in the matter of the appointment of a successor’.22 Hencken regarded Mahr as ‘the foremost archaeologist in the country’.23 Mahr had been trained in the subjects of anthropology and ethnology and specialised in prehistory at the University of Vienna. He became an expert in the Iron Age and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Prehistoric Archaeology in July 1912. His doctoral thesis was on the La Tène Period in Upper Austria, which was later published as Die La Tène – Periode in Oberosterreich.24 He worked at the Museum of Linz in 1912 for approximately two years, reorganised the prehistoric collections and introduced a new Register of Acquisitions in 1919. At that time he also worked on an inventory of artefacts in the Museum of Hallstatt and wrote a book on this collection, Die Prahistorischen Sammlungen des Museums zu Hallstatt, which was published in 1914.25 Mahr was employed at the Natural History and Prehistoric Museum in Vienna from 1912 and held positions as Assistant Curator, Curator and Deputy Director of the Anthropological-Ethnological Department. In 1918, he took part in excavations in Montenegro and Albania and participated in excavations in Holland during the period 1919 to 1920. In 1926 he excavated the Grunerwerk salt mine at Hallstatt in Austria.
On 17 July 1934, de Valera appointed Mahr to the position of Director of the National Museum of Ireland, despite the fact that he was not an Irish citizen.26 He was enabled to do so as the nationality clause included in the regulations governing the filling of technical and professional posts had been omitted since February 1934.27 A permit