New Year Destruction at the Hill of Tara, Ireland

In fla­grent con­tempt of best archae­o­log­i­cal and eco­log­i­cal prac­tice, a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign of tree felling, earth clear­ance and mon­u­ment removal has begun at the Hill of Tara. This is even before the Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) con­tract for the M3 Motor­way, through the Tara / Skryne Val­ley, has even been signed. Dai­ly protests are tak­ing place, every 7am in the morn­ing at the Hill of Tara car park.

In fla­grent con­tempt of best archae­o­log­i­cal and eco­log­i­cal prac­tice, a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign of tree felling, earth clear­ance and mon­u­ment removal has begun at the Hill of Tara. This is even before the Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) con­tract for the M3 Motor­way, through the Tara / Skryne Val­ley, has even been signed. Dai­ly protests are tak­ing place, every 7am in the morn­ing at the Hill of Tara car park.

The sit­u­a­tion at Rath Lugh: Rath Lugh is “ownedâ€? by Coillte, the State Forestry Board. Native trees are being sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly felled, even though Rath Lugh is a des­ig­nat­ed nation­al mon­u­ment, and strate­gi­cal­ly placed as part of the defen­sive for­ti­fi­ca­tions at Tara, on the north­ern slope of the Skyrne Val­ley. A new area is being worked just behind Lis­mullen. There are oth­er wood­ed areas between Rath Lugh and Blun­del­stown. It is vital that these be pre­served from the van­dal­ism that has already been per­pe­trat­ed. Coillte is legal­ly oblig­ed to pro­tect nation­al mon­u­ments on land in its care.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=234 Coillte’s con­tempt for the archae­o­log­i­cal sites on the land it over­sees has already been dis­played in the case of the Mooghaun hill­fort, which has been dam­aged by Coillte’s plant­i­ng of conifer trees there. Mooghaun hill­fort (Moghane in Irish), locat­ed in Co. Clare, is thought to be the largest hill­fort in Ire­land. Built c.1260–930 B.C., it is sit­u­at­ed “on a low hillock in a fair­ly gen­tly undu­lat­ing land­scape of good agri­cul­tur­al land dot­ted with many small lakesâ€? Gro­gan 1993: 39  http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0392/D.0392.198910240071.html

Coillte is a state body; it is, how­ev­er, behav­ing as if it were a pri­vate cor­po­ra­tion, enti­tled to dis­pose of its “propertyâ€? as it sees fit. Again, Coillte’s record speaks for itself. In March 2001, Coillte approved the sale of 250 acres of land at Bel­lan­aboy, Co Mayo for the Cor­rib Gas Ter­mi­nal. In Decem­ber of 2004 the remain­ing area of 160 hectares was sold by Coillte to Shell for €2.75 mil­lion. Sub­se­quent­ly Coillte grant­ed Shell “wayleaveâ€? per­mis­sion to build a high-pres­sure raw gas pipeline through 3km of adja­cent Coillte land at Augh­oose, Co Mayo.  http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=439
Coillte over­sees more than 1.5 mil­lion acres on behalf of the State, so the stakes are high.

The sit­u­a­tion at Baron­stown:
Baron­stown lies in the heart of the Tara-Skyrne Val­ley, and has been described by the Archae­ol­o­gists who under­took the Dis­cov­ery Pro­gramme sur­vey at Tara as a Nation­al Mon­u­ment. It was how­ev­er, exclud­ed from the Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment (EIS). There is grow­ing evi­dence of improp­er exca­va­tion meth­ods by the pri­vate archae­o­log­i­cal com­pa­nies over­seen by the Nation­al Roads Author­i­ty. Plas­tic bags con­tain­ing bones, lack­ing num­bers or mark­ings, are being found lying in ran­dom places. This in itself is proof of inad­e­quate archae­o­log­i­cal super­vi­sion.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=289

The sit­u­a­tion at Col­lier­stown: Again this was not­ed by the Dis­cov­ery Pro­gramme as being wor­thy of des­ig­na­tion as a Nation­al Mon­u­ment, but was exclud­ed from the EIS. It is a bur­ial site, with many graves of rec­tan­gu­lar shape, edged with stone slabs. These appear to be children’s graves.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=273

The sit­u­a­tion at Roestown:
Here, a com­plex of bee­hive souter­rains has been removed. Anoth­er has been new­ly dis­cov­ered, yet is short­ly to be removed. Tree felling has already occurred.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=304
All of this van­dal­ism is pos­si­ble because the Min­is­ter for the Envi­ron­ment has scrapped the her­itage pro­tec­tion pro­vi­sions in Irish law, and sub­sti­tut­ed an Act grant­i­ng him the pow­er to issue licens­es for unsu­per­vised archae­o­log­i­cal exca­va­tion of des­ig­nat­ed sites. Under this con­ven­tion, a host of licens­es have been issued for exca­va­tions in the Tara / Skryne Val­ley.  http://www.sacredireland.org/gallery.html These pic­tures give an indi­ca­tion of the dam­age that occurred in 2005:
The dig­gers move in:  http://www.sacredireland.org/12don.html
Earth Removal:  http://www.sacredireland.org/22don.html
 http://www.sacredireland.org/27don.html
 http://www.sacredireland.org/28don.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/24don.html
The bones of the dead:  http://www.sacredireland.org/bone.html
More exca­va­tor activ­i­ty:  http://www.sacredireland.org/12.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/13.html
Top­soil exca­va­tions:  http://www.sacredireland.org/3.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/18.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/digger.html